Runic Games

Runic Games was a video game development studio founded in August 2008 by a seasoned team of industry veterans: Travis Baldree, the designer of *Fate*; Max and Erich Schaefer, co-founders of Blizzard North; and Peter Hu. The founders, along with the 14-member team from the defunct Flagship Studios Seattle, leveraged their extensive experience from iconic titles like *Diablo*, *Diablo II*, and *Mythos* to establish the new company. The studio's primary goal was to create a spiritual successor to their previous project, *Mythos*, and continue developing action role-playing games (ARPGs).

The company operated on a direct-to-consumer model, selling its games as one-time purchases for PC and consoles. Its debut title, *Torchlight*, was developed in a remarkably short 11-month period and released in October 2009. This single-player ARPG, set in a fantasy world with a distinct steampunk aesthetic, was met with critical acclaim and commercial success, selling over 500,000 units within six months. This early success led to a significant milestone in May 2010, when publisher Perfect World Entertainment acquired a majority stake in the studio for $8.4 million to bolster its own R&D capabilities. Runic Games followed up with *Torchlight II* in 2012, which expanded on the original with multiplayer features and was also highly successful. In 2017, the studio released its third and final game, *Hob*, an action-adventure game with a focus on exploration and puzzles, which diverged from their established ARPG formula.

Despite the critical success of its titles, Runic Games was shut down by its parent company, Perfect World, on November 3, 2017. The closure was part of a strategic shift by Perfect World to focus on online games as a service, a business model that did not align with Runic's focus on creating single-purchase games. Prior to the shutdown, key founders had already departed; Travis Baldree and Erich Schaefer left in March 2014 to form a new, smaller studio called Double Damage Games, expressing a desire to return to smaller-scale development. Max Schaefer left in early 2016 to found Echtra Games, which would later develop *Torchlight III*.

Keywords: Runic Games, Torchlight, Torchlight II, Hob, action RPG, ARPG, video game developer, Travis Baldree, Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, Blizzard North, Flagship Studios, Perfect World Entertainment, Double Damage Games, Echtra Games, dungeon crawler, hack and slash, single-player games, PC gaming, indie studio, Seattle game developer