Westwoods C&C Retaliation on the PSX was the bomb

However, MicroProse Transport Tycoon has been omitted, why has this happened, I still play this game, infact it's the only pre-2009 game (it think) I still play.

DaxStrife:

Shamus Young:
Low on cash after the lawsuit, they were bought up by an investment group run by... guess who. They filed chapter 11, renamed themselves again, restructured the company, moved the company, and then began buying up other companies.

The description there brings to mind the image of a parasitic organism (Kotick in this case) finding a wounded animal, infecting it, and then using the poor creature to spread itself to others.
Tell me I'm not the only one thinking this.

AND THUS:

Bobby Kotick is JENOVA. O_O

Andy_Panthro:
Since everyone else is mentioning those companies they think should have been mentioned, allow me:

Origin.

Mainly (for me) for the Ultima series, but they produced a lot of other games too, including Bioforge, Crusader and Wing Commander.

Another great developer destroyed by EA.

Yeah poor Origin.
Though it's back now I think. Or, another company pinching the same name

Good to see a shout-out to that ancient history, and it was fun to realize that I've actually heard of all of those companies, despite most of them disappearing before I was ten. See, my first computer was given to me by my grandfather in 2004--it was a laptop from 1994. The newest, shiniest game I could run on the thing was Thief. As such, I was still playing Warcraft II, X-COM and the original Command and Conquer while everyone else was geeking out over Halo and Morrowind. Good times.

Sierra 'n Broderbund are the mystery to me. time to look 'em up now. Got me all curious 'n shtuff.

Oh, and your 2D Boy - Activision analogy at the end there scares me. Not cool, man. Not cool.

id be interested to find out what happened to the people after the companies they were in went under. how many moved on to other profitable companies and how many comically moved from one sinking ship to another.

I thought Looking Glass were shut down by the mother company in order to secure more funding to make Daikatana in what is now known as "the stupidest thing anyone has ever done".

MicroProse were by BFFs of gaming studios back in the day. They made EVERYTHING I played. X-Com, Stealth Fighter, Gunshop 2000. Back when all games came on floppies and I used to refer to it as "playing the computer" because it didn't occur to me that computers were good for anything else.
Which let's face it, if you weren't working in an office because you're only 8 years old, a Windows PC had two functions: games and MS Paint.

ldbmikey86:
Sierra 'n Broderbund are the mystery to me. time to look 'em up now. Got me all curious 'n shtuff.

Oh, and your 2D Boy - Activision analogy at the end there scares me. Not cool, man. Not cool.

Sierra were the kings of adventure games. I understand they're terribly dated today, but their 'Quest' series were just about the greatest thing around until Lucasarts brought out Monkey Island.

Dune 2's also notable for being a tie-in game. Yes, a sequel to a tie-in game invented the RTS.

You should have mentioned Black Isle. Hopefully, there will be more columns like this one to cover some other developers.