Massive Entertainment is a Swedish video game developer based in Malmö, Sweden. The company has been fully owned by Ubisoft Entertainment since 2008.
History[]
Massive Entertainment was founded in 1997 by Martin Walfisz. In June 2000, Massive released the award-winning PC action-strategy title Ground Control, published by Sierra Studios. The same year an expansion was released named Ground Control: Dark Conspiracy.
in October 2007, they released the game World in Conflict, which has been described in interviews on the company's official website as a further development of the real-time tactics gameplay formula from the Ground Control games, but set on Earth during an alternate history late Cold War. The game was released on September 18, 2007, and won wide critical acclaim, including several nominations for one of the best games of 2007. It was followed by an expansion, World in Conflict: Soviet Assault in March 2009.
On August 6, 2008, Activision Blizzard put up Massive Entertainment for sale after the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games and the subsequent internal reorganization. On November 10, 2008, Ubisoft acquired Massive Entertainment. In March 2009, following the acquisition, the former CEO Martin Walfisz left Massive.
In December 2010, Ubisoft confirmed that Massive would be "teaming up on a project for Assassin's Creed". On May 5, 2011, it was announced that Massive Entertainment is collaborating on development of Assassin's Creed Revelations, developing the Desmond's journey sequences in the game, which was released in November 2011. Massive also collaborated on the development of Far Cry 3, which was released in December 2012.
At E3 2013 Massive announced and demonstrated their next game, Tom Clancy's The Division. The game was released in March 8, 2016, and sold more copies in its first 24 hours than any game in Ubisoft's history and that it had the biggest first week ever for a new game franchise, generating $330 million in its first five days.
In March 2017, Massive announced that their next major title will be based on James Cameron's Avatar.
In January 2021, the newly reformed Lucasfilm Games announced that Massive started work on a new Star Wars open world title. This would be the first Star Wars game outside of Electronic Arts since they acquired a May 2013 contract to produce all Star Wars related titles. This would later be revealed as Star Wars Outlaws, and it is scheduled to release in 2024.
The studio is much well known for developing games like:
- Ground Control
- Ground Control: Dark Conspiracy
- Ground Control II: Operation Exodus
- World in Conflict: Soviet Assault
- Assassin's Creed Revelations (assisted Ubisoft Montreal)
- Far Cry 3 (assisted Ubisoft Montreal)
- Just Dance Now
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
- Star Wars Outlaws