Wimbledon Bridge House, Hartfield Road, SW19
"Later, we IPOed the company by reversing into a shell called Eidos (hence the name change from Domark) on the London Stock Exchange." That's Dominic Wheatley, one of the two founders of Domark, describing on Reddit the baffling financial procedure which lead Domark to become Eidos. A common theme on this blog is the failure of any of the big players of the UK software industry to survive as independent entities; Gremlin, Ocean, Psygnosis, they all fell one-by-one. Would Eidos Interactive be the company to break that curse?
No. Why would I refer to Edios in the past tense if they were still operating? It did look, initially, as if Eidos could take on the world but by the turn of the millennium it was being referred to so often as "troubled Eidos" that you could believe it was the official name of the company. Eidos was originally a company specialising in video compression. They were formed in 1990, and apart from entirely changing the direction of Domark Software, they are not especially notable. RETRO GAMER (issue 96 page 40) explained what happened next:
[Eidos]
was a small company employing just three people, creating video
compression technology particularly for the Acorn Archimedes, but it had
no sales. It was, however, floated on the London Stock Exchange, and it
had raised £1 million. [Charles Cornwall the founder of Eidos] was
looking for something better to attach his company to and, during the
conversation with the Domark pair, an agreement was struck to
corporately reverse Domark into it. This enabled the publisher to grab
some cash and go on to raise another £6.5 million through city
investors, made possible by its new listed company status. As part of
the deal, however, Domark had to change its name. It became known as
Eidos.
September of 1995 saw four companies merge to
become Eidos PLC; Domark, Eidos, and two other software developers, Big
Red Software, and Simis. Eidos was the overall name of the company and
the software company bit, Eidos Interactive, was a subsidiary. Eidos
Interactive was always the most profitable and active part of the
company, so to keep things simple from now on I'll mostly just call it
Eidos. The timing of all this corporate stuff was impeccable.Sony
released the PlayStation in Europe the same month. It was a good time
for the games industry. The same year also saw Mark Strachan, the Mark
in Domark, move on from the company. Ian Livingstone [1], at this point deputy chairman of Domark, stepped up to become executive chairman of the new Eidos group.
Previously, in Birmingham, Geoff Brown, the owner of distributor CentreSoft and publishing house US Gold, had merged the various businesses under his control to form another big company called CentreGold. Eidos acquired CentreGold in April 1996. (If you want a metaphor for the UK software industry in the early nineties, imagine a big fish being eaten by a bigger fish and that fish being eaten by an even bigger fish, and so on.) This was significant because one of CentreGold's assets was the Derby based developer Core Design, and their new game in development called Tomb Raider.
Ferry House, 51-57 Lacy Road, Putney, SW15
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| April 2023 |
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| THE GUARDIAN December 6 1996 page 261 |
Ferry
House is where Domark were based from 1988. I can't show you a picture
because its gone. Replaced by the building in the photo above, a
place called The Glass House. Ferry House was demolished pre-Streetview,
some time around 2003. Eidos were based at Ferry House until at least
December 1996. That's when they ran a recruitment advert in the GUARDIAN
using the Lacy Road address and a note that the jobs are "based
Wimbledon." A move to Wimbledon is clearly on the cards. So why does
Eidos start referring customers to US Gold's Birmingham address?
Units 2/3 Holford Way, Holford, Birmingham, B6
Eidos never actually moved to Birmingham, unless anyone knows differently. My best guess is that they stayed in Ferry House but directed customers to the Holford Way address. The first Eidos branded game was (probably) the 96/97 update of the favourite game of divorce solicitors everywhere Championship Manager 2, and this uses US Gold's address in Holford Way.
I thought the use of the Birmingham address was temporary. Covering the move from Putney to Wimbledon. Christmas 1996 was coming and you don't want customers trying to call a support number which is no longer valid, or returning faulty games to an empty office. US Gold obviously had a well established customer service department so why not use their facilities as a bridge between London addresses. Except, every time I tried to find the last game to use the Holford Way address I kept pushing the date further and further forwards; Championship Manager: Season 97/98, released 31 October 1997 still carries the Holford Way address. So does 1998's Ian Livingstone's Deathtrap Dungeon. Let's jump forwards, 2000, Thief II: The Metal Age, still Birmingham. What about 2004's Thief Deadly Shadows? Ah, that's Wimbledon so now I can work backwards. How about 2003's, Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Also Wimbledon. If this is boring to read then imagine how my close relations and friend feel. The best I can do to date the last use of the Holford Way address is to put it in early 2002 (Core Design, Herdy Gerdy). If anyone cares to correct me then please leave a comment.
Here's what Holford Way looks like now; consider it a preview of the US Gold article.
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| September 2023 |
Wimbledon Bridge House, Hartfield Road, SW19
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| November 2024 |
THE INDEPENDENT referred to Eidos as "Wimbledon based" by May 1997 (With Lara at home, it's cool to be a nerd, an article about the unstoppable rise of Lara Croft). But there's also this site which suggests Eidos moved in to Wimbledon Bridge House on 13th May 1998. I have no idea which is correct.
You will be relieved to read that I'm done with listing games and their year of release, although it was worthwhile because I was surprised to see just how many successful franchises Eidos published; Legacy of Kain, Hitman, Championship Manager, Deus Ex, Thief, Commandos and of course Tomb Raider. And yet by 2000 the company was often being described as "troubled" or occasionally "beleaguered" if journalists owned a thesaurus.
Companies House
is a lovely resource. It traffics mainly in things I don't understand;
resolution of allotment of securities, certificate of reduction of share
premium, no idea guv. What I do understand, a bit, are the year-by-year
accounts which companies are legally obliged to file. These are
great and full of little tidbits of information (Ian Livingstone got a
bonus of £120,000 in 1997/98). Even better, they open with a Chairman's
statement which is designed to sum up the previous year at a level even a
financial dum-dum like me can understand.
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| Eidos accounts 1998 |
The Companies House PDF of the 1998 accounts is digitised from a crude black and white photocopy but you can see the cover is a lovingly rendered piece of artwork featuring characters from Eidos games. Someone put a lot of work into these accounts. They don't need to look this good but they do because this was Cool Britannia. It's the battle of Britpop; the 1997 general election; alcopops; lad's mags; the Spice Girls; Pierce Brosnan; and Lara Croft. Eidos rightly saw themselves as part of the national mood and took the time to make something as dull and stuffy as corporate financial records reflect the mood of the nation. Further down the page I'll post that Lara Croft cover of THE FACE which always gets used to demonstrate what a cultural icon the character had become. Ian Livingstone's chairman's statement opens the 1998 report:
I am pleased to report record revenues for the year of £137.2 million and operating profits of £19.5 million compared to revenues of £75.5 million and an operating loss of £6.4 million in 1997... These results reflect the continuing success of the Tomb Raider franchise... Eidos released 19 titles in the year compared to 28 in the previous year... The Tomb Raider franchise goes from strength to strength, and has, because of its high global profile, become a very valuable product which has the potential to generate increasingly high levels of revenue in the years to come. This is illustrated by the recent announcement of the live action Tomb Raider film planned by Paramount Pictures.
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| THE FACE June 1997 |
The results for 1998/99 were even better. This was the year of Championship Manager 97/98 and Championship Manager 3 "the UK's fastest ever selling PC title"; and Tomb Raider III [2];
1999: I am pleased to report our best full year results to date, with revenues for the year up from £137.2 million to £226.3 million and operating profit up from £19.5 million to £39.2 million...
Then came the millennium.
2000: Our
operating results for the year to 31 March 2000 reflect the significant
challenges that we have faced over the period, both as a company and as
an industry that is in transition. Turnover for the year decreased from
£226.3 million to £194.8 million, generating an operating loss of £26.8
million compared to an operating profit of £39.2 million in the prior
year.
Costs were up and revenue was down. Eidos actually made a profit of £25.2 million but this was off the back of a one-off sale of investments worth £80.2 million. Consumers weren't buying as many games because they were waiting for the launch of the PlayStation 2 (which arrived on 24 November 2000). Then Infogrames came sniffing around because they are nothing if not the harbingers of doom. The deal broke in the news around July and had fallen apart by October.
2001: The group experienced a challenging period in the year ended 31 March 2001. The hiatus in demand for entertainment software by consumers awaiting deliveries of the next generation of consoles has lead to a disappointing financial performance both for ourselves and many other leading publishers of interactive video games. This was exacerbated by price and market erosion. We started the year with a significantly oversupplied retail channel having achieved lower than anticipated sales of our video games during the 1999 Christmas period and in the January to March 2000 quarter. Clearing this excess inventory position required us to make an exceptional provision to cover returns of video games not sold by the retail channel. We have also had to provide as an exceptional item for the write off of our investment in Express.com, Inc. which proved unable to sustain its business model in the face of the widely reported downturn experienced by business to consumer online companies. In addition the company incurred costs in respect of the aborted bid talks. These three exceptional items required us to write off a total of £54.1 million during the year.
Express.com was a Los Angels based online retailer. Eidos owned a 12% stake, having paid $55 million in November 1999. They went into liquidation on 7 March 2001 just before the end of the financial year. Overall revenue was down again to £160.4 million and operating losses increased to £39.5 million. When the £54.1 million write off was added on to this loss, it resulted in an overall loss for the year of £97.3 million. Ian Livingstone assumed a new role as Creative Director. he stepped down as Chairman in April 2002, to be replaced by John van Kuffeler.
2002 was a marginally less horrid year (losses for the year were only £30.7 million, hooray!). 2003 was technically better but there's a throwaway line in the annual report which covers another stormy period in the company history:
...
the board decided in July 2003 to transfer the future development of
its key Tomb Raider franchise from our Core Design studio in the UK to
our Crystal Dynamics studio in the US.
There's a lot of history in that sentence. For the long version, you should read “It felt like robbery”: Tomb Raider and the fall of Core Design . The short version: Core Design killed Lara Croft in 1999 by dropping a pyramid on her at the end of Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation. Yes it's deliberately ambiguous (you don't see a body so soap opera rules apply, and there's a chance for an unlikely resurrection around, say, 2003) but it's clear the intent is to finish her off. However Eidos had a cash cow which they wanted to keep milking so Core Design set up two teams. One to develop a flashback game called Tomb Raider: Chronicles, released in time for Christmas 2000. The second team began work on a title called Tomb Raider next generation. This became Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, released in June 2003. EDGE, at the end of a Making-of article, described how:
The
game that eventually emerged was beset by bugs and felt disjointed in
the extreme. The situation wasn’t helped by Eidos facing financial
troubles. An ex-Eidos employee tells us that by March 2003 the game had
already been submitted eight times to Sony and was eventually rushed out
to hit the April 1 accounting deadline. Core wanted more time to polish
the game, but another delay could have tipped the publisher over the
edge.
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness sold 2.5 million copies. It's release began the process which lead to Core Design being taken over by Rebellion Design in 2006 (Eidos sensibly kept all the Core Design intellectual property). As so often happens, Core Design was renamed, Rebellion Derby, and then closed in 2010.
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| THE GUARDIAN Thursday 7 August 2003 page 68 |
That GUARDIAN article also notes that Sports Interactive, developer of Eidos' second biggest franchise Championship Manager, was in the middle of:
... protracted negotiations with Eidos. It's previous contract to develop [Championship Manager] has expired, and rumours abound that there is some confusion over which company owns various rights, trademarks and intellectual property. Eidos could, undoubtedly, hand Championship Manager to another developer, but the franchise's fans are unusually passionate, and that would be a dangerous move.
Eidos did hand the franchise over. The 2003 company report notes:
On
4th September 2003 Eidos and Sports Interactive announced that they had
mutually agreed to end their long standing relationship for the joint
development of the Championship Manager football manager series, for
which Eidos owns the brand.
The end of 2003 saw the last version of the game by Sports Interactive. Both companies went their separate ways. Eidos kept the rights to the game and the user interface. Sports Interactive had the rights to the game's database and match engine and used this to develop a new series called Football Manager [3]. The split seems to have been caused by mutual mistrust. EDGE reported in 2012:
Almost
a decade after Sports Interactive left Eidos, studio director Miles
Jacobson has finally explained the developer’s acrimonious split from
its publisher.
...
The Sports Interactive studio director had
never publicly addressed the split - until yesterday, at the GameHorizon
conference in Newcastle Gateshead, during a 'fireside chat' with Eidos
life president Ian Livingstone. He explained why the studio took the
difficult decision to go it alone and rebrand its core product as
Football Manager.
...
He felt Eidos had unfairly lined up a team
to take over the development of Championship Manager; Livingstone
claimed the publisher was simply preparing for a split amid rumours
Sports Interactive was planning to break away.
...
“Eidos wanted
more control. We wanted more control. We were asking for high
royalties,” said Jacobson. Eidos set up Beautiful Game Studios nine
months before Championship Manager 4 was due to come out. They told me that BGS were making a platform game. I thought our number was up.".
...
Livingstone
commented that Eidos was "preparing for the future as there was a
rumour SI was looking to leave”. Jacobson categorically denied that he
had spoken to any other publishers at that point.
Would this make a difference to Eidos in the long term? Eidos didn't have a long term left. The company put itself up for sale in June 2004, following another disappointing trading year. A private equity group called Elevation Partners expressed interest in buying out Eidos and made a cash offer of 50p a share, which valued the business at £71 million. This April 2005 offer was quickly followed by one from Battersea based publisher SCi. The SCi offer wasn't for cash. Instead they offered one share in SCi for every six Eidos shares. The value of SCi's shares rose on the news, with the result that their offer was worth more and valued Eidos at £106 million. The deal took a couple of years to go through and was completed on 18 May 2007. SCi brought back all the shares of Eidos, which meant Eidos stopped being a PLC (Public Limited Company) and became Eidos Ltd.
Eidos was now a subsidiary of SCi. Things didn't go any better for SCi than they had for Eidos. SCi founder Jane Cavanagh was forced out in 2008 after a rocky couple of trading years. The GUARDIAN noted:
SCi's
woes mirror those of Eidos, the games software publisher it acquired
three years ago. Eidos had been forced to put its business up for sale
after repeatedly missing target dates for the launch of its Tomb Raider
games.
Following Jane Cavanagh's departure, SCi formally changed its name to Eidos in 2008. The following year, Square Enix brought up Eidos. Earlier in 2009 Bandai Namco had snapped up Atari/Infogrames/Ocean and I wonder this encouraged Square Enix to go shopping. Eidos had its name changed to Square Enix Ltd in 2009 and the company moved out of Wimbledon Bridge House in 2014.
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| November 2024 |
Wimbledon
Bridge House is big. It's really big. Which is why there are two
pictures. A great chunk of Wimbledon town centre was redeveloped in the
late eighties and Wimbledon Bridge House was built on a deck extended
over railway tracks, and also on old British Rail land which ran down
the side of the tracks. It's a huge ugly L-shaped building and while I
was clicking around on the internet I found the FUTURE WIMBLEDON SUPPLEMENTARY PLANNING DOCUMENT.
It notes, in the page 29 public feedback section: "Modern office
buildings, from the 1960/70s are least liked, some of them quite
strongly for example Wimbledon Bridge House. " So I'm glad it's not just
me who thinks its awful.
Anyway, Eidos moved in to Wimbledon
Bridge House which meant they were in the one place where you didn't
have to look at Wimbledon Bridge House. It's just up the road from
Domark's old offices at 22 Hartfield Road, which were also demolished during a later phase of the redevelopment.
Square Enix Ltd, 240 Blackfriars Road, 12 & 13th Floors, London,SE1
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| November 2024 |
This is where the Domark/Eidos story ends. A brand new, in 2014, tower block just south of the Thames at 240 Blackfriars Road. Again, it's a big building. So here are a couple of pictures to give you an idea of the scale. I did look up to see if anyone had stuck a Square Enix sign in one of the 12th or 13th floor windows but I couldn't spot anything.
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| November 2024 |
[1] One of the three founders of Games Workshop along with John Peake and Steve Jackson, in
1975. Ian Livingstone designed Domark's first game, a 1984 adventure called Eureka. He
invested in Domark and, after he sold his Games Workshop stake in 1991,
joined the Domark board in 1992.
[2] The third Tomb Raider game in three years and the second PlayStation exclusive (Tomb Raider II being the first). Eidos relied on an annual Tomb Raider game to achieve its financial goals. The stress of these annual releases was one of the things which did for Core Design.
[3] Kevin Toms gnashes his teeth.
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