Gearbox Software

Lore & Background

Gearbox Software was founded on February 16, 1999, by Randy Pitchford, Brian Martel, Stephen Bahl, Landon Montgomery and Rob Heironimus, five developers formerly of Rebel Boat Rocker. Before Rebel Boat Rocker, Pitchford and Martel previously worked together at 3D Realms, and Montgomery previously worked at Bethesda Softworks. By 2000, the company employed 15 people. They started with developing expansions to Valve's Half-Life. Porting Half-Life to console platforms (each with new game content) followed, building the company's experience in console game-making, in addition to enhancing and building upon the successful Counter-Strike branch of the Half-Life franchise. Prior to Half-Life 2, it had developed or helped develop every Half-Life expansion game or port, including Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Half-Life for the Sony PlayStation 2 (including Half-Life: Decay), and Half-Life for the Sega Dreamcast (including Blue Shift). Branching out to other publishers, it pursued additional port work, each game being released with additional content, but this time from console to PC. These projects included its first non-first-person shooter, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, and Halo: Combat Evolved, forging new publisher relationships with Activision and Microsoft Game Studios respectively. Additional new development, in the form of a PC game in the James Bond franchise (James Bond 007: Nightfire) for Electronic Arts, also occurred during the company's initial 5-year period. In 2005, it launched an original property of its creation, Brothers in Arms, with the release of Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 on the Xbox, PC and PlayStation 2. Later that year a sequel, Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood, was launched. In 2008, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway was released. 2007 brought announcements of new projects based on licensed film intellectual properties, including the crime drama Heat and the science-fiction classic Aliens. In the September 2007 issue of Game Informer, Pitchford stated that development on the Heat game had not yet begun, as the planned development partner for the project had gone under. This was followed by an announcement by Sega that it would be helming a new version of rhythm game Samba de Amigo for the Wii, a departure from its signature first-person shooter titles. Work on a new intellectual property, Borderlands, began

In Their Own Story

The server room hums under fluorescent light, the kind of hum that means someone is about to press a button they've been dreading for a decade. A developer in a faded t-shirt cracks open a cold can of soda, stares at the build log scrolling across three monitors, and whispers, "Okay. One more pass." Outside the Frisco office, the Texas sun bakes the parking lot. Inside, the sound of a shotgun firing echoes through the headset speakers, followed by a gravelly, smirking voice: "That's what I like to see." The build compiles. The timestamp reads 2011. Somewhere, a Duke Nukem fan who has been waiting since the late '90s finally gets to pull the trigger.

Reader's Guide

Gearbox Software is best known for creating the Brothers in Arms and Borderlands series, and for owning the intellectual property of Duke Nukem and Homeworld. The company also ported numerous games to console and PC, including Half-Life expansions and Halo: Combat Evolved.

Did You Know?

• Gearbox Software was founded by five developers who previously worked at Rebel Boat Rocker.
• The company's first original game series was Brothers in Arms, launched in 2005.
• Borderlands was first announced in 2007 and released in October 2009, published by 2K.
• Gearbox owns the intellectual property rights to Duke Nukem and Homeworld.
• Gearbox was acquired by Embracer Group in April 2021 for up to $1.378 billion.