Graftgold
 |
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| Video game company | |
| Industry | Video games |
| Fate | Bankruptcy |
| Founded | 1983 |
| Founder | Steve Turner |
| Defunct | Early 1998 |
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Key people
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Steve Turner, Andrew Braybrook, Andrew Hewson |
| Website | http://www.graftgold.com/ |
Graftgold was an independent computer game developer that came to prominence in the 1980s, producing numerous computer games on a variety of 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit platforms.
Graftgold was formed in 1983 when Steve Turner decided to quit his day job as a commercial programmer to concentrate on producing computer games. Realising that his ambitions were too much for one man to realise, he hired a close friend, Andrew Braybrook, to work for him. After a brief spell developing games for the Dragon home computer, Graftgold soon turned their attention to the more lucrative Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum markets.
Much of Graftgold's early success came about through their association with Hewson Consultants. Formed by Andrew Hewson in the early 1980s, Hewson Consultants became one of the UK's most successful computer game publishers. Whereas many publishers at the time relied on larger parent companies to handle the manufacturing of their products, Andrew Hewson owned his own cassette duplication plant, affording them much greater control over their ability to respond to market trends. Many of Graftgold's most memorable titles were published by Hewson including Paradroid, Uridium, Quazatron and Ranarama.
Towards the end of the 1980s, it became apparent that Hewson Consultants were suffering financial difficulties. Two of its in-house programmers, Dominic Robinson and John Cumming, responded to this development by leaving the company to join Graftgold. Steve Turner decided it would be in Graftgold's best interest to seek another publisher, so they parted ways with Hewson and signed a publishing deal with Telecomsoft, the software division of British Telecom.
Hewson weren't happy to see their most successful development partner jump ship, particularly because Graftgold were due to deliver two keenly anticipated titles -- Magnetron (by Steve Turner, for the ZX Spectrum) and Morpheus (by Andrew Braybrook, for the C64). Graftgold argued that because they weren't contracted to Hewson, they were perfectly within their rights to seek an alternate publisher. Unable to sustain a protracted legal wrangle, Hewson eventually settled with Telecomsoft out of court and parted company with Graftgold.
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Wikipedia