CI Games / City Interactive

CI Games / City Interactive is a developer and publisher.

CI Games / City Interactive Webpage, Facebook

CI Games is a Polish developer, publisher, and distributor of video games for PC and consoles, operating since 2002 - originally under the name City Interactive. The company's headquarters is located in Warsaw. The founder, president, and majority shareholder of CI Games is Marek Tyminski, former head of the publishing company Lemon Interactive.

CI Games business overview

• CI Games business overview
• History of CI Games

CI Games as a game producer

CI Games operates as a game developer. Over the years, they have also owned additional support studios located in Bydgoszcz, Katowice, Poznan, Rzeszow, and Bucharest, Romania.

In its early years as City Interactive, the company focused on typical low-budget productions, mainly simple first-person shooters (including rail shooters) and arcade-style flight simulators. In later years, the studio’s portfolio expanded to include casual puzzle and adventure games. The real breakthrough came in 2010 with the success of the tactical FPS Sniper: Ghost Warrior, which pushed City Interactive to rethink its strategy and start aiming for high-budget AAA games. Today, CI Games’ key franchises are still Sniper: Ghost Warrior and the Dark Souls-inspired action RPG series Lords of the Fallen.

CI Games as a game publisher

From the very beginning, City Interactive handled its own publishing, though most of its low-budget games were released only in Poland. Sticking to its original strategy, City Interactive sold its games at very low prices (around 3-6 USD), mainly through kiosks, newsstands, and big retail chains. Besides the main game releases, the company also offered plenty of bundles - like Best of Action, Modern War Pack, Flight Pack, and Action Pack - which packaged several games of similar genres together.

Since 2012, when the company rebranded and shifted its strategy, CI Games has moved away from its old publishing catalog to focus entirely on new, high-budget in-house projects. CI Games still publishes its titles digitally around the world, while physical copies of some games are handled globally by major partners like Bandai Namco Entertainment.

CI Games as a Polish game publisher

Up until 2007, City Interactive didn’t publish games from outside developers - that was managed by its subsidiary Onimedia, better known as OniGames. Once it was liquidated and folded back into the parent company, City Interactive also started distributing games from other publishers in Poland. Like its own games, most of the titles City Interactive published were budget-friendly and casual, including plenty of simulators. The company also published some larger indie games, including 18 Wheels of Steel: Extreme Trucker 2, Braid, Dark Sector, Obsure II, Saw, Simon the Sorcerer 4, The Whispered World, World of Goo, Zombie Driver HD, as well as popular series like Angry Birds, Black Mirror, Crash Time, Sherlock Holmes, and SBK/Superbikes.

History of CI Games

Humble beginnings

City Interactive was founded in 2002 through the merger of the publisher Lemon Interactive (originally CODA) and two development studios, Tatanka and We Open Eyes, both of which had started out as independent demo groups. From the very beginning, the company focused on both creating its own games and publishing titles from other developers. This was a dual-track operation. Only games made by the company’s own internal studios carried the City Interactive brand. City Interactive’s subsidiary, Onimedia (better known as OniGames), took care of publishing and distributing games made by external developers, including international studios.

In both of these areas, City Interactive specialized in low-budget games, offering decent quality at low prices. City Interactive’s games were everywhere - not just in specialty stores, but also at kiosks, newsstands, and major retail chains. City Interactive kicked off its first in-house project with the action-racing game Smash Up Derby, which hit stores in April 2003. Between 2004 and 2011, the company rolled out several low-budget series in Poland, including FPS hits like Terrorist Takedown, Code of Honor, and Battlestrike; arcade-sim games such as Wings of Honor and Combat Wings; and casual adventure franchises like Art of Murder and Chronicles of Mystery.

In February 2007, City Interactive acquired the Rzeszow-based studio Detalion, with its co-owners, Robert Ozog and Lukasz Pisarek, taking the lead at the company’s new branch in the city. Shortly after, City Interactive switched from a limited liability company to a joint-stock company, and in November, it made its debut on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. At the same time, the subsidiary Onimedia was shut down, and from then on, all games distributed by the company carried the City Interactive brand. City Interactive’s strategy of steadily building its reputation with low-budget games paid off, giving the company financial stability and paving the way for steady growth. Thanks to that, the company picked up another external developer, Fresh Chicken Studio, in 2008, and went on to open two new branches in Poznan (2009) and Bydgoszcz (2010). At the same time, City Interactive set up local offices in Canada, Germany, Spain, the UK, and the US. Between 2007 and 2008, the company also maintained an office in Peru, South America, but it was closed after just one year.

A breakthrough

City Interactive’s real breakthrough came in 2010 with the release of the tactical action game Sniper: Ghost Warrior, the company’s first title to launch worldwide on PCs as well as on Microsoft and Sony consoles. Thanks to the game’s strong commercial success, City Interactive shifted its focus, deciding from that point on to concentrate on high-budget AAA titles. In the summer of 2011, City Interactive opened a new branch, City Interactive Studio Srl, in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, to support the development of their games. In the years that followed, City Interactive gradually pulled back from the casual games market, with their last title of this kind being the arcade flight simulator Dogfight 1942 (2012), which was originally intended as the third entry in the Combat Wings series. Not long after the game’s release, the Katowice branch of City Interactive that developed it was shut down.

CI Games name change

In 2012, City Interactive rebranded as CI Games, aiming to leave its budget-game past behind and boost its international profile. In March the following year, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 hit stores, and by fall, CI Games unveiled the sci-fi shooter Alien Rage. Both games sold far below expectations, causing temporary financial troubles for the company and leading, among other things, to the closure of CI Games’ Romanian studio in November 2013. Things didn’t get any better with the ambitious World War II shooter Enemy Front, set during the Warsaw Uprising, which launched in June the following year and turned out to be a commercial flop.

Luckily, the company brought on board Tomasz Gop, co-creator of the first two Witcher games, and in late October 2014, teamed up with German studio Deck 13 Interactive to release the third-person action RPG Lords of the Fallen. Released worldwide by the renowned Japanese publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment, the game turned out to be a major success for the local developer. However, right after the official release of the Ancient Labyrinth expansion, CI Games - unhappy with the results - ended its contract with Deck 13 Interactive, triggering a months-long dispute over the rights to the franchise. The dispute was settled in February 2016, with both companies noting that they still saw potential for future collaboration.

In July 2015, Tomasz Gop, the executive producer of Lords of the Fallen, left CI Games over differences in vision for the franchise’s future. After a few months at Techland, he returned to CI Games to work as a game designer on the sequel to the RPG. In April 2017, the third installment of the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series was released. Building on the success of the first two games, it cemented the franchise as a leading name in the sniper genre, rivaled mainly by Rebellion’s well-known Sniper Elite series. Unfortunately, the game wasn't received well, and its initial sales were disappointing. This led to a wide-ranging restructuring at CI Games.

A new beginning

In late June 2017, the company revealed plans to get back into game development, this time focusing on smaller-budget projects. Tomasz Gop was also let go (he later joined Gliwice-based Destructive Creations), and work on Lords of the Fallen 2 was handed over to an external studio. Although Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 ultimately managed to sell a million copies, that success wasn’t enough to spare CI Games’ internal development team from major layoffs, which came to light in February 2018.

In August, CI Games announced that Lords of the Fallen 2 would be handed over to Defiant Studios. The new team was meant to rebuild the game from the ground up, but after just a few months - in May 2019, to be exact - CI Games cut ties with Defiant Studios and decided to finish the project internally.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts

Meanwhile, on August 16, 2018, CI Games announced Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts. The developers ditched the open-world approach in favor of smaller, sandbox-style maps. The smaller scope let the developers fine-tune the details and fix more issues. Thanks to this approach, the game launched on PC and consoles on November 22, 2019, to generally positive reviews.

In January 2020, CI Games reported strong sales for Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts, with 250,000 copies sold. By April, the studio proudly reported that sales had doubled, with Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts generating around 10 million USD in revenue. It’s no surprise, then, that the second entry in the Contracts subseries was announced in June 2020, with the first teaser dropping in mid-September.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2

Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 launched in June 2021 on PC as well as both eighth- and ninth-generation consoles. The game got off to a strong start, posting better sales and generating higher revenue than its predecessor over the same post-launch period.

In early September, less than two months after launch, CI Games announced that the project had already paid for itself - 560,000 copies sold brought in about 8 million USD of revenue. By May 2022, the game had surpassed one million players. Given the successes outlined above, it was no surprise when CI Games posted a new job listing in late May 2022. The listing made it clear that the studio was already working on the next installment of its flagship series.

Lords of the Fallen (2)

As for the troubled Lords of the Fallen 2, CI Games announced in September that it had formed a new studio - Hexworks - to take over development. The studio was split between teams in Bucharest and Barcelona - and interestingly, some of its developers had been involved with the project all the way back in 2014.

The first teaser trailer for the project was unveiled during Gamescom 2022. As it turned out, the developers ultimately abandoned the idea of creating a sequel in favor of a full-fledged reboot of the series, which introduced numerous changes to the gameplay mechanics. The announcement of The Lords of the Fallen, as the project was officially titled, was met with a very positive response from both fans and the media.

In the months that followed, more gameplay footage and updates from the project gradually emerged. Interestingly, during this time the project underwent a final title change and was officially released as Lords of the Fallen.

The game officially launched on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S in October 2023. Players greeted it fairly lukewarmly, reflected in its "mixed" reviews on Steam. Industry media were a bit kinder - Metacritic shows average scores ranging from 71 to 75 out of 100, depending on the platform.

Among the complaints were technical issues; interestingly, shortly after the game’s release, unofficial reports suggested these problems stemmed from a rushed switch to Unreal Engine 5. Nevertheless, the Hexworks team quickly got to work fixing the issues with patches.

The stock market reacted nervously, and CI Games’ share price tumbled by nearly 25%. Just a few days later, the official sales numbers came in, and they looked rather well. According to the publisher, the game sold over a million copies within its first week. Work on patches and additional content for Lords of the Fallen paid off, and CI Games expressed clear optimism about the franchise’s future.

LotF's Success and Ambitious Future Plans

In January 2024, it was revealed that CI Games had four new titles currently in development. The upcoming slate includes Project 3, Hexworks’ follow-up to Lords of the Fallen, likely titled Death of the Fallen; an open-world horror-survival game, codenamed Project Survive; the next installment in the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series, Project Sniper Ghost Warrior Next; and a multiplayer shooter tentatively called Project Scorpio. All of these projects - except for Death of the Fallen - were being developed by Underdog Studios, with each one built using Unreal Engine 5.

Unfortunately, shortly after these announcements, CI Games revealed it had laid off roughly 10% of its workforce. Marek Tyminski explained that the layoffs were aimed at maintaining the company’s “business strength and stability.”

In April, CI Games shared more positive news, reporting net revenues of $60 million for 2023 - a 400 percent increase compared to the previous year. 83 percent of that revenue came from Lords of the Fallen. In May, it was announced that Lords of the Fallen and Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 would be added to Xbox Game Pass in 2024. Later that same month, Xbox Game Pass subscribers got access to the former game.

At the same time, CI Games rolled out a major update for Lords of the Fallen, adding two new gameplay modes. The good news for fans didn’t stop there - by mid-June, the Polish studio revealed that a third installment in the series was officially in the works. The then-untitled game was set to launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, with a planned release in 2026. Interestingly, Epic Games handled the PC version, meaning it would be available exclusively through the Epic Games Store.