Eidos Interactive

Square Enix completed the merger with Eidos Interactive by November 2009, absorbing it primarily into group company Square Enix Limited (also known as Square Enix Europe). Eidos executive Phil Rogers stayed with the company as Square Enix Europe CEO and became CEO of Americas and Europe in 2013 along with other executives. In August 2022, games holding company Embracer Group completed its acquisition of studios Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal and Square Enix Montréal and intellectual properties Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kain, Deus Ex and Thief) among other assets. Rogers joined Embracer and formed an operative group called CDE Entertainment.

Founding of publisher Domark (1984–1994)

!Former Domark logo (1984–1996)

Founding of publisher Domark (1984–1994)

Domark was founded by Mark Strachan and Dominic Wheatley in 1984. For Christmas 1983, Wheatley (the grandson of the writer Dennis Wheatley) had visited his family, where he saw his brother play The Heroes of Karn on a newly purchased Commodore 64. He was impressed with the game and felt that ordinary people, not just those who worked with computers professionally, would start acquiring computers and games for them. When he returned to his London job as a junior account executive at a small advertising agency, he spoke to Strachan, his colleague, and floated the idea of setting up a company to publish games from third-party developers. Strachan initially declined but later saw that many retailers in the city had sold out of ZX Spectrum models, which he felt signaled great interest in video games. Strachan and Wheatley, then aged 24, subsequently quit their jobs and founded Domark, using a portmanteau of their first names for the company. To design the adventure game Eureka!), they hired Andromeda Software and the Hungarian developer Novotrade, and brought in Ian Livingstone as its writer. Strachan and Wheatley further devised a competition in which a telephone number would be shown upon completing the game, and the first person to call it would win £25,000. Through friends, family, and other acquaintances, they raised £160,000, more than enough to finance the project. Domark released the game later in 1984, marketing it through Concept Marketing, another firm set up by Strachan and Wheatley. Impressed with the company's operations, Livingstone invested £10,000 in Domark. Eureka! sold 15,000 copies. Domark were unsure what project to pursue next; Strachan and Wheatley had a contact in the estate of Ian Fleming and approached them with the idea of producing a video game based on James Bond. In 1985, Domark obtained a licence to A View to a Kill. Despite delays caused by scope creep, the eponymous game) was released later in 1985 and was "actually quite successful", according to Wheatley.

Eidos Interactive