Star Theory Games (formerly Uber Entertainment Inc.) was an American

video game developer A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with em ...

based in

Bellevue, Washington Bellevue ( ) is a city in the Eastside (King County, Washington), Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area, and the f ...

. Founded in March 2008 by Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor, it released its first title, '' Monday Night Combat'', in 2010 to positive reviews. The company assumed the name Star Theory Games in 2019. It wound down in March 2020 after the contract for its game ''

Kerbal Space Program 2 ''Kerbal Space Program 2'' is a space flight simulation video game developed by Intercept Games and published by Private Division. It is the sequel to 2015's ''Kerbal Space Program'' and was released in early access on February 24, 2023, for W ...

'' was canceled by publisher

Private Division Fictions Inc. (formerly Private Division) is an American video game publisher based in Los Angeles, California. The company was founded in December 2017 as a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive. It funds and publishes indie games developed ...

, which set up a new studio and hired a large portion of Star Theory's staff in December 2019 to continue the game's development, before Star Theory and its remaining staff became unable to secure new publishing agreements as a result of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

History

Uber Entertainment was founded by Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor in March 2008 in

. They became the studio's

president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

and chief technology officer, respectively. In September 2012, the company successfully ran a

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

campaign for its

real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a Video game genre, subgenre of strategy video games that does not progress incrementally in turn-based game, turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time." By contrast, in Turn-based strategy, tur ...

title, ''

Planetary Annihilation ''Planetary Annihilation'' is a real-time strategy PC game originally developed by Uber Entertainment, whose staff included several video game industry veterans who worked on ''Total Annihilation'' and '' Supreme Commander''. The game was releas ...

''. The fundraiser produced over

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

2.2 million in funds. The original retail release was slated for December 2013, but was postponed, with the game expected "to be feature-complete in early 2014." On March 31, 2014, Uber Entertainment announced PlayFab as a spinout to continue development of their UberNet back-end gaming service. On January 29, 2018 PlayFab was acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

to form Microsoft Azure PlayFab. On October 2, 2014, Uber Entertainment announced a new

campaign for a

game, ''Human Resources''. The goal was set for $1.4 million, though the project was cancelled October 21, 2014 after projections showed the fundraiser would fail to raise the needed capital. On August 18, 2015, Uber Entertainment released Planetary Annihilation: Titans as a stand-alone expansion to

. On August 17, 2018, Planetary Annihilation Inc was founded to continue development and publishing of the

and Planetary Annihilation: Titans games. At the 2019

Gamescom Gamescom (stylized as ''gamescom'') is a trade fair for video games held annually at the Koelnmesse in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Gamescom is the world's largest gaming event, with 370,000 visitors and 1,037 exhibitors from 56 ...

, Uber Entertainment announced it had changed its name to Star Theory Games, and was working with publisher

, a subsidiary of Take-Two, to produce ''

''. Creative director Nate Simpson said that the name change was due to their prior name being confused with

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

, the car-share company; Simpson noted that Uber had previously gotten permission from them to use the "Uber" name before, which they had granted. The original ''

Kerbal Space Program ''Kerbal Space Program'' is a 2015 Space flight simulation game, space flight simulation video game developed by Mexican studio Squad for Linux, macOS, Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. In the game, players dir ...

'' had been produced by

Squad In military terminology, a squad is among the smallest of Military organization, military organizations and is led by a non-commissioned officer. NATO and United States, U.S. doctrine define a squad as an organization "larger than a fireteam, ...

, but Take-Two acquired the rights to the series in 2017, helping Squad to publish and meet their commitments to their players before handing over the intellectual property. Private Division opted to bring in Star Theory, a larger team but with similar capabilities, to work in parallel to develop the sequel while assisting Squad with the original game. However, Take-Two announced it had created a new studio within Private Division in February 2020, later named Intercept Games, and had transferred development duties of ''Kerbal Space Program 2'' there; along with this, members of Star Theory, including creative director Nate Simpson and studio head Jeremy Ables, had joined with this new studio, leaving Star Theory's role in the game unclear. According to

Jason Schreier Jason Schreier (born May 10, 1987) is an American journalist and author who primarily covers the video game industry. He worked as a news reporter for ''Kotaku'' from 2011 to 2020 and was recognized for several Investigative journalism, investig ...

for ''

Bloomberg News Bloomberg News (originally Bloomberg Business News) is an international news agency headquartered in New York City and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg T ...

'', around December 2019, shortly after they negotiated an extension to complete work on the game, Take-Two wanted to acquire Star Theory but Berry and Mavor did not like the terms of the deal, so Take-Two instead established Intercept Games and offered all Star Theory staff a position there, while Berry and Mavor encouraged the staff to stay with Star Theory. By February about twelve of the 30 staff had moved to Take-Two, and ''Kerbal'' contract was pulled from them by Take-Two. The remaining staff had planned to prepare prototypes and have material ready to present to publishers at the March 2020

Game Developers Conference The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year, Game Developers Choice Awards and ...

, but because of the

, the conference and others like it were closed down. Star Theory Games was shut down on March 4, 2020 as a result; some of the staff ended up at Take-Two to join the former staff.

Games developed

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://startheory.com/ American companies disestablished in 2020 American companies established in 2008 Companies based in Bellevue, Washington Defunct video game companies of the United States Video game companies disestablished in 2020 Video game companies established in 2008 Video game development companies Defunct companies based in Washington (state) 2008 establishments in Washington (state) 2020 disestablishments in Washington (state)