Cryptic Studios
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| Subsidiary of Perfect World Entertainment | |
| Industry | Computer gaming |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Headquarters | Los Gatos, California |
| Products | City of Heroes, City of Villains, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, Neverwinter |
| Parent | Independent (2000–2008) Atari, SA (2008–2011) Perfect World (2011-Present) |
| Website | http://www.crypticstudios.com |
Cryptic Studios is an American video game developer specializing in massively multiplayer online role-playing games. It is headquartered in Los Gatos, California and is a wholly owned Perfect World subsidiary.
Established in June 2000, Michael Lewis and Rick Dakan conceived the idea for Cryptic Studios. "Rick and I wanted to do an online role-playing game," Lewis told the Los Gatos Weekly Times in January 2007. "We'd been role-playing gamers growing up, and thought that online would be a great way to continue that experience, while overcoming the distances involved. We decided that there were too many fantasy games in development—this was 1999, so we discussed many alternatives. Superheroes quickly rose to the top of the list. It is something people could understand and identify with quickly, versus ideas like science fiction or horror, because it provides an infinite background on which to create adventures of all kinds. And who doesn't want to have super powers?"
At a New Year's party in 1999, Lewis and Dakan met Bruce Rogers, Matt Harvey and Cameron Petty, veterans of Atari Games, who had begun trying to found a computer game company but lacked funding. In 2000, Lewis sold his company, Stellar Semiconductor, Inc., to Broadcom Corporation. With Lewis' funding and Rogers' expertise, the group formed Cryptic Studios. Role-playing game writer Jack Emmert joined the team to work on game design. In March 2007, Cryptic Studios moved to a larger corporate headquarters in Los Gatos, California. Plans for the new headquarters include adding a state-of-the-art sound studio to be built by the Walters-Storyk Design Group. At that time the company also adopted a new corporate logo. Cryptic Studios now employs more than 100 full-time employees.
On December 9, 2008, Atari, SA announced that it had acquired Cryptic Studios. On March 2010, Bill Roper was promoted to Chief Creative Officer, succeeding Emmert (who became the Chief Operations Officer), but left the studio in August that same year. On March 2011, Jack Emmert was promoted to Chief Executive Officer when John Needham left to pursue other opportunities in the gaming industry. On May 17, 2011, Atari announced the divesting of its interest in Cryptic Studios. On May 31, 2011 it was announced that Perfect World had acquired Cryptic Studios. On April 25, 2012 Cryptic Studios announced that the security of one of its user databases was compromised as far back as December 2010.
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