Splash Damage Ltd. is a British video game developer specialising in multiplayer first-person shooter video games. The studio is best known as the creators of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.
History
Formation (2001) Splash Damage was formed in May or June 2001 by the creators of mods such as Quake 3 Fortress, who was then joined by a number of modders from the Team Fortress and Quake 3 modding scene. 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, creating editing tools and virtual cameras, and editing in-game footage.
Enemy Territory Era (2002–2007) 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 the map Operation Market Garden for id Software's Return to Castle Wolfenstein which immediately 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. This was originally envisioned to include both a single-player campaign developed by Mad Doc Software and a multiplayer mode developed by Splash Damage, however the single player campaign was dropped.
The Windows version of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory was released online for free on 29 May 2003, with Linux and Mac versions following later. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory won several Game of the Year and Editor's Choice awards, was nominated for a BAFTA, and is still an incredibly popular online FPS in 2021, with a number of fan projects and tournaments.
In June 2003 and once again working with id Software, Splash Damage created all the maps for Doom 3'''s multiplayer mode.
At the same as Doom 3, Splash Damage 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, adding a first for the series in the form of vehicles.
Splash Damage grew from seven people on the team at the start team to thirty by the end of the project, in part due to the challenge of creating brand new assets rather than using existing ones on previous titles.Enemy Territory: Quake Wars shipped on 28 September 2007, and has won dozens of awards to date, including several Game of the Year awards and over 25 Editor's Choice awards. The game was later ported to Xbox 360 by Nerve Software who had also contributed a number of maps to the PC version.
Later games & Warchest/Fireteam (2008–2015) In 2008, Splash Damage announced they would be partnering with Bethesda Softworks on an unannounced title. In 2009, Splash Damage and Bethesda announced Brink, which would eventually be released in May 2011 and was Splash Damage’s first multiplatform title. In August 2011 Splash Damage and Bethesda released the Agents of Change DLC for Brink.
In 2012, Splash Damage launched a publishing division called Warchest and a back-end technology business called Fireteam. It was described as “Splash Damage’s call-to-arms for free-to-play games that are both high-quality and non-exploitative.” These smaller companies went on to publish and support a number of future Splash Damage.
Warchest’s first published game was RAD Soldiers, released in December 2012 on iOS devices, another first for Splash Damage. The tactics-styled game was released after five months of open public testing and over 100,000 pre-registrations, and was made available PC as a free download in the Chrome Web Store in 2013.
On 25 October 2013 Splash Damage partnered with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to create the multiplayer mode for Batman Arkham Origins. Named Invisible Predator Online, this was the Batman Arkham series' first multiplayer mode.
16 February 2015 saw the launch of Splash Damage’s second Warchest-published title and second mobile title with Tempo, released exclusively on iOS.