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Mediatonic Limited

Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Video games
Founded	September 2005; 19 years ago (2005-09) in Uxbridge, England
Founders	Dave Bailey Paul Croft
Headquarters	London, England
Key people	Dave Bailey (CEO) Paul Croft (CGO)
Products	Murder by Numbers Fall Guys
Number of employees	230 (2020)
Parent	Tonic Games Group (2020–present)
Website	mediatonicgames.com

Mediatonic Limited is a British video game developer based in London. The company was founded in September 2005 by Brunel University students Dave Bailey and Paul Croft, releasing their first game, Snowman Salvage in December that year. Initially a work-for-hire studio for Flash games, Mediatonic has developed original games for other platforms, including Murder by Numbers and Fall Guys. As of June 2020, Mediatonic employs 230 people in four studios and is part of Tonic Games Group, which is a subsidiary of Epic Games since March 2021.

History

Mediatonic was founded in September 2005 by friends Dave Bailey and Paul Croft, both aged 21 at the time, during their final year at Brunel University. They decided on the opening in a drunken conversation at the university's student union bar. With an office near the campus, they set up the company as a work-for-hire studio to create Flash games and sometimes skipped lectures to accept calls from clients. Snowman Salvage, a game that was part of Croft's dissertation, was Mediatonic's first release in December 2005.

PopCap Games, Big Fish Games and PlayFirst were early Mediatonic clients and, among others, Mediatonic produced Flash conversions of Bejeweled, Bookworm, Diner Dash and Poppit!. It also created Amateur Surgeon, an original game, for Adult Swim Games. Mediatonic was profitable enough in its first year that, following Bailey and Croft's graduation, the studio moved to a former government building in Westminster in February 2006 and hired ten employees. Other early games by Mediatonic included Meowcenaries, Gigolo Assassin, Must Eat Birds, and Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess. Having reached 25 employees, Mediatonic moved to new offices near Covent Garden in February 2008.

In July 2009, Mediatonic opened a studio in Brighton to act as a digital media agency, later spun out into a company named Graphite. Mediatonic received funding from entrepreneurs Kelly Sumner, Ian Livingstone and Geoff Heath in April 2010, and from Frog Capital in January 2012. Pete Hickman, a former executive producer for Eidos Interactive, joined Mediatonic as its head of production in July 2011. Planning to double its 50-strong headcount, Mediatonic moved its London headquarters to Soho in May 2012. Mediatonic opened a Brighton development studio that October. According to Bailey, Mediatonic began giving original games and work-for-hire projects equal weight and the company grew as a result. It later branched out into publishing, opening The Irregular Corporation as a sister company in December 2015.

Mediatonic moved into Shell Mex House, London, in April 2017. In July, a five-person team was established in a co-working space in Madrid, and expanded into a proper office in July 2019. A sister development studio, Fortitude Games, was established in Guildford in 2018. Frog Capital sold its share in Mediatonic to Synova Capital, making a 7.4-times return on its investment. A fourth studio for Mediatonic in Leamington Spa was announced in February 2020. Also in early 2020, Mediatonic established its headquarters in an office above London Victoria station, although it went largely unused due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing the company to make employees work from home.

Bailey and Croft established Tonic Games Group as a parent company for Mediatonic, The Irregular Corporation, and Fortitude Games, moving 35 employees to Tonic Games Group, while Mediatonic had a staff of 230. On 2 March 2021, Epic Games announced that it had acquired Tonic Games Group, including Mediatonic. In September 2023, Mediatonic was subjected to deep job cuts by its parent company. Though it was first speculated that the entire studio had been closed, that proved not to be the case.

Games developed

References

1. ^ "Company". Mediatonic. 2019.
2. ^ Parkin, Simon (8 October 2010). "From Flash To Minis: Mediatonic On Creating Tiny Wonders". Gamasutra.
3. ^ Edge Staff (30 September 2010). "Mediatonic's Rise". Edge. Archived from the original on 3 April 2013.
4. ^ Takahashi, Dean (18 June 2020). "Tonic Games Group will manage multiple game studios and publishing operations". VentureBeat.
5. Edge Staff (30 September 2010). "Mediatonic's Rise – Page 2 of 2". Edge. Archived from the original on 18 June 2013.
6. Orland, Kyle (11 July 2011). "Eidos' Pete Hickman Joins Mediatonic As Head Of Production". Gamasutra.
7. Weber, Rachel (11 July 2011). "Eidos exec producer joins Mediatonic". GamesIndustry.biz.
8. Weber, Rachel (2 April 2012). "Mediatonic planning to double headcount". GamesIndustry.biz.
9. Weber, Rachel (2 October 2012). "New Brighton studio for Mediatonic". GamesIndustry.biz.
10. ^ Wallace, Chris (18 June 2020). "Mediatonic launches 300-strong Tonic Games Group – "It means that we can all be much more resilient and stand the test of time"". MCV/Develop.
11. Batchelor, James (8 July 2019). "Mediatonic opens new Spanish studio". GamesIndustry.biz.
12. Reid, Mike (6 June 2019). "7.4 x return on the sale of Frog's stake in Mediatonic". Frog Capital.
13. Kerr, Chris (3 February 2020). "Fall Guys developer Mediatonic to open new UK studio". Gamasutra.
14. Bankhurst, Adam (2 March 2021). "Epic Games Has Acquired Fall Guys Developer Mediatonic". IGN. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
15. Phillips, Tom (29 September 2023). "Fall Guys developer hit hard by Epic Games layoffs, but studio to remain open". Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 3 March 2024.

External links

• Official website

v t e Epic Games
List of games
Games developed	Jazz Jackrabbit Jazz Jackrabbit Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Unreal Unreal Facing Worlds Tournament (1999) Tournament 2003 Championship Tournament 2004 Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict Tournament 3 Tournament (cancelled) Gears of War Gears of War Gears of War 2 Gears of War 3 Gears of War: Judgment Infinity Blade Infinity Blade Infinity Blade II Infinity Blade III Fortnite Save the World Battle Royale "Tilted Towers" "Peely" Creative "Fortnite Holocaust Museum" Lego Fortnite Rocket Racing Fortnite Festival Other ZZT Jill of the Jungle Kiloblaster Silverball Xargon Extreme Pinball 7th Legion Age of Wonders Shadow Complex Bulletstorm Robo Recall Paragon The Matrix Awakens
Third-party publishing	Epic MegaGames Castle of the Winds Brix Electro Man Ken's Labyrinth Ancients 1: Death Watch Solar Winds Zone 66 The Adventures of Robbo Epic Pinball Heartlight Highway Hunter One Must Fall: 2097 Traffic Department 2192 Radix: Beyond the Void Tyrian Seek and Destroy Epic Games Publishing Kid A Mnesia Exhibition PC Building Simulator 2 Rumbleverse Alan Wake II
Technology	Unreal Engine 1 2 3 4 5 UEFN Verse Epic Citadel Epic Games Store Houseparty Sketchfab Bink Video
Subsidiaries	Current Chair Entertainment Cloudgine Harmonix Psyonix Mediatonic Former Impossible Studios Titan Studios Pitbull Studio People Can Fly Bandcamp
People	Current Tim Sweeney Mark Rein Steve Polge Sjoerd De Jong Former Rod Fergusson Cliff Bleszinski Mike Capps
Related	Make Something Unreal Fortnite World Cup Epic Games v. Apple Epic Games v. Google Coalition for App Fairness
Category

• 2005 establishments in England
• British companies established in 2005
• Companies based in the City of Westminster
• Epic Games
• Video game companies established in 2005
• Video game companies of the United Kingdom
• Video game development companies