Great Games By Defunct Studios

Cliff Bleszinski made many games during his career. He worked alone, then founded Epic Games and developed 15+ titles, including Gears of War, and finally started Boss Key Productions in 2014. Unfortunately, the studios made only one game - LawBreakers (another title, Radical Heights, never went out of Early Access). This FPS in the form of 5v5 match was warmly received by critics. However, the sales were extremely low. Following the overall under-performance of both LawBreakers and Radical Heights, the studio was shut down on May 14, 2018.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was the only title by 38 Studios. Despite the fact that famous game designers, writers and musicians - Ken Rolston, R. A. Salvatore, Todd McFarlane, and Grant Kirkhope participated in the development, the game released was criticized by many. In the end, while the sales were good, 38 Studios bankrupted - only a few months after the release of the game.

A small Australian studio Team Bondi made one of the best neo-noir detective games of all time - L.A. Noire. Their appointment with Rockstar Games that published the game, was a success. However, the problems started with the next Team Bondi title. Several former employees complained about poor working conditions in the company - and Rockstar refused to sign up a new agreement with Bondi. The company's history ended in 2011.

Black Isle is a legendary studio. It went down in the history of videogames with the first two titles in the Fallout series. It's hard to overrate the influence of this game on the RPG genre and the popularization of the post-apocalyptic games. Unfortunately, in 2003 due to the studio's financial problems, the decision was made to stop the work. Many project, including Fallout 3 and Baldur's Gate III, were cancelled. 

After that, however, Feargus Urquhart, the leader of Black Isle, founded Obsidian Entertainment. Fair replacement.

Delphine Software was a very productive developer. Besides extremely beautiful cinematic platformer Another World, they made over 20 other titles, including the Moto Racer series. However, Another World became their biggest success and infuensed many other developers.

Delphine Studios was sold to Doki Denki in 2002. Both companies closed down in 2004.

You surely know the titles, developed by Pandemic Studios: Star Wars: Battlefront , Destroy All Humans!, The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, The Saboteur, Batman: The Dark Knight. All of them are creative and high quality, that's why it's especially sad that the studio closed down in 2009. Shortly before that it became an Electronic Arts-owned developer and then was retrenched. Some former employees from Pandemic still work at EA Los Angeles studio.

Bullfrog Productions was a British video game developer, founded in 1987 by Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux. They gained popularity with their third title, Populous. Soon after that they joined EA, their publisher. However, in 1997 Molyneux left the company, and former employees of Bullfrog followed him. Their projects were cancelled, and in 2001 Bullfrog was merged into EA UK.

Kaos Studios was created by former members of Trauma Studios to focus on first-person shooters only. They worked as a subsidiary of THQ from 2006 till 2011. During this time they made two games - Frontlines: Fuel of War and Homefront. Homefront, despite its great atmophere and story, got less than expected reception. Kaos Studios was closed, and in 2013 THQ was bought by Ubisoft.

Irrational Games has a long history. They were known as 2K Boston; in 2017 the studio announced it had rebranded itself as Ghost Story Games, founded by 12 of the former Irrational members. While Ghost Story hasn't made any new game yet, the Bioshock series they created turned Irrational Games into one of the most famous and influential game developers. Hope, new projects from these guys will be as good as BioShock.