Rebellion Developments - History

History

Rebellion was established by brothers Jason and Chris Kingsley in 1991. Their first known title was Alien Vs. Predator for the Atari Jaguar, which was considered one of the best games for that console. In June 2000, they bought the comic 2000 AD from Fleetway, and have since developed several characters from the comic for the games market. The first commercial release, Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs. Death was mildly successful. A second game was released in 2006 based on Rogue Trooper. Its 2005 game Sniper Elite was awarded "Best PC/Console Game" in the TIGA Awards of 2005. As of 2010 the game holds an average GameRankings scores of 73.44% for the PC version, 76.65% for the PlayStation 2, and 76.97% for the Xbox.

In 2009, Rebellion's Rogue Warrior game received poor reviews but notable titles have included Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron and The Simpsons Game, both for the PSP. In 2010, they developed the latest Aliens vs. Predator game, published by Sega, which received generally favourable a mixed critical reception, but debuted at number one on the UK all formats chart. As of June 2011, it is the fastest-selling game of 2010 in the UK, a record previously held by BioShock 2; it was also the best-selling game on Steam, as well as on the retail PC charts. Along with developing the title's characters for video games, Rebellion continues to publish 2000 AD as well as its sister title the Judge Dredd Megazine. In 2004, Rebellion entered a deal with DC Comics to reprint several 2000 AD stories in trade paperback form, including Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Nikolai Dante, and Sinister Dexter. When DC left the venture, citing poor sales, Rebellion created its own line of American graphic novels, distributed through Simon & Schuster. Rebellion also created the Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files series, which has begun reprinting almost every appearance of Judge Dredd in chronological order. In 2006, following the demise of Elixir Studios, Rebellion purchased all IP related to the studio, including Evil Genius and Republic: The Revolution. Later, in 2009, Jason Kingsley confirmed rights ownership of former Vivendi franchises sold before merging with Activision in 2008, as well as the intention of making new sequels of those and Elixir Studios games.

In 2006, Rebellion purchased Tomb Raider developers Core Design from Eidos, as well as Strangelite from Empire Interactive, making the company the largest independent European development studio. Rebellion launched their novel imprint Abaddon Books and made a number of publishing purchases. These included buying Clickwheel, which was used to digitally published 2000 AD, with archives and an online iPhone comic reading application launched later. In August 2008, Blackfish Publishing, publisher of Death Ray magazine, announced it had been bought by Rebellion and in September 2008, Rebellion acquired Mongoose Publishing, who had previously published games like The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game. In June 2009, it was announced that Rebellion had acquired the role-playing and board games publisher Cubicle 7. In September 2009, Rebellion acquired Solaris Books from Games Workshop. Two games from Rebellion are being released in 2012: NeverDead, published by Konami and directed by Shinta Nojiri (who was involved in the development of the Metal Gear Solid series of games), and Sniper Elite V2, which is being co-published with 505 Games.