Deep Silver Volition
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Deep Silver Volition (formerly Volition Inc.) was a video game developer based out of Champaign, Illinois. Best known perhaps for their exceedingly popular Saints Row series, for the purposes of this wiki, Deep Silver Volition is most relevant as the developer of each of the four core games in the Red Faction series, beginning with Red Faction in 2001.
Citing corporate restructuring following the collapse of a multi-billion dollar deal, Embracer Group shut down Deep Silver Volition's operations as of August 31, 2023, with its intellectual property being transferred to Plaion.
Formation & Early Years
Volition Inc. was established in November 1996 by a team of developers who had previously worked at Parallax Software; best known for developing the Descent series, a pioneering 3D space combat game. When Parallax Software decided to split, one group, led by Matt Toschlog, formed Outrage Entertainment in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The other, led by Mike Kulas, stayed in Champaign, Illinois and established Volition Inc.
Immediately following the split, both Volition and Outrage endeavored to work with Interplay Entertainment for two projects each. Outrage began development on Descent 3, while Volition made Descent: FreeSpace. Following the release of Descent: FreeSpace, Volition began work on four new projects: FreeSpace 2, Descent 4, Summoner, and Tube Racer. Within roughly 18 months, FreeSpace 2 had been released (to relatively poor sales), and Tube Racer had been cancelled.
Red Faction
In June of 1999, while Volition was still hard at work developing Descent 4, Interplay released Descent 3, which had been in development by Outrage for some time. Due to several factors including Interplay's on-going financial difficulties and the poor sales of Descent 3, Interplay and Volition separated (at the suggestion of Volition).
Interplay having retained publishing rights to the Descent franchise in the split, Volition was then left with a partially complete game that was at that point called Descent 4, that they could not take to another published. Volition then made the decision to reuse much of the code and tools, and some of the assets originally developed for Descent 4, and create Red Faction.
Red Faction released in 2001 and was an overwhelming success for Volition, eclipsing the success even of Volition's own Summoner, which they had expected would have vastly outperformed Red Faction.