Closure of Gathering of Developers

Gathering of Developers, Inc. was a video game publisher founded in 1998 by Mike Wilson and several of his associates. Their mission was to bridge the gap between publishers and independent game developers, which they hoped to achieve by allowing independent developers to have creative control over their projects, ownership of their IPs, as well as participation in publishing and marketing decisions.

The company's foundation was caused by the restrictive development of the first-person shooter Daikatana by Ion Storm, where very few people had say in the development, which was accentuated by the phrase "Design is Law." On top of this, publisher Eidos Interactive gave into demands such as the removal of milestones. Gathering of Developers published several acclaimed games such as Max Payne and Mafia.

Gathering of Developers was bought by Take-Two Interactive in May 2000, who unsuccessfully attempted to manage the Texas-based company from its New York office. The people at Gathering of Developers were dissatisfied with the lack of freedom allowed for following through its principles of fair treatment of developers and IP ownership. One of the founders, Doug Myres, unexpectedly died in May 2001, prompting the others at the company to negotiate a separation shortly after. Take-Two eventually took total control of the company's operations and rebranded it as Gathering before folding it into the 2K Games label in 2004.

Wilson did attempt to salvage the principles of Gathering of Developers with the foundation of Gamecock Media Group, complete with the same goals and practices, but unfortunately, that too was acquired and dissolved by another company (in this case, SouthPeak Games).

7 years after the closure. Wilson along with two founder of Gathering and Gamecock, with a few people Graeme Struthers and Nigel Lowrie later formed another company called Devolver Digital.