Splash Damage


 * For the in-game concept, see Splash damage.

Splash Damage is an independently-owned British game development company that specializes in multiplayer first-person shooter games. Based in London, England, the studio is best known as the creator of the Enemy Territory franchise for id Software.

History
Splash Damage was formed in May 2001 by the creators of high profile free mods, such as Quake 3 Fortress.

The studio began life working with Now TV and Gamer.tv, providing both custom maps and an in-game television production solution. Splash Damage staff also worked to produce and present over 150 TV shows based on Quake III Arena Capture the Flag.

In March 2002, Splash Damage partnered with Games Domain to produce a number of multiplayer maps for their online gaming service. One of these was a map for id Software's Return to Castle Wolfenstein based on Operation Market Garden; this map was hugely successful online and instantly became the most played third-party map for the game.

Following Market Garden's success, Activision and id Software asked Splash Damage to produce three additional multiplayer maps for the Return to Castle Wolfenstein Game of the Year Edition. The same year, Splash Damage partnered with the two companies to develop Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, a stand-alone expansion based on Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The Windows version of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory was released online for free on May 29, 2003, with Linux and Mac versions following later. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory won several Game of the Year and Editor's Choice awards and remains one of the most popular online first-person shooter titles.

In June 2003 and once again working with id Software, Splash Damage created all the maps for Doom 3's multiplayer mode and at the same time began pre-production on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, a follow-up to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory using a heavily modified version of the id Tech 4 engine and set in the QUAKE universe. Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars shipped on September 28, 2007 and has won dozens of awards to date, including several Game of the Year awards and over 25 Editor's Choice awards.

Future
In May 22, 2008 Bethesda Softworks, best known for The Elder Scrolls series, announced a long-term development partnership with Splash Damage.

On 11 May 2009, Bethesda's Managing Director Sean Brennan made a statement regarding a new game in the works:
 * We've signed the Splash Damage deal, and its first title with us is going to be shown at E3. We're not announcing the name yet, but it's a first-person shooter. That's a product that we believe is a genre-breaker, it's a real killer app. From a quality perspective we're pitching that along the same lines as Fallout 3. We've kept it under lock and key, there are so many innovative features in there we don't want to reveal them too soon. We've spent significant resources developing the title. And that's a great example of our European work.

It has since been announced that the first-person shooter in question is Brink. The game is now due for release in Spring 2011.

Awards

 * 2008: winner of the Develop Industry Excellence Award for Best Independent Studio
 * 2008: winner of the Ultraweb Level 4 Award
 * 2008: nominated for a Golden Joystick award for UK Developer of the Year
 * 2009: winner of the Guardian Top 100 UK Tech & Media Companies

The full list of awards can be found on their web site.