 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | July 2000 |
| Founder | Tim Schafer |
| Headquarters | , US |
Key people | Tim Schafer (president and CEO) |
| Products | |
Number of employees | 65 (2015) |
| Parent | Xbox Game Studios (2019–present) |
| Website | doublefine |
Double Fine Productions, Inc. is an American first-party video game developer of Xbox Game Studios based in San Francisco, California. Founded in July 2000 by Tim Schafer shortly after his departure from LucasArts, Double Fine's first two games – Psychonauts and Brütal Legend – underperformed publishers' expectations despite critical praise. The future of the company was assured when Schafer turned to several in-house prototypes built during a two-week period known as "Amnesia Fortnight" to expand as smaller titles, all of which were licensed through publishers and met with commercial success. Schafer has since repeated these Amnesia Fortnights, using fan-voting mechanics, to help select and build smaller titles. Double Fine is also credited with driving interest in crowdfunding in video games, having been able to raise more than US$3 million for the development of Broken Age, at the time one of the largest projects funded by Kickstarter, and more than US$3 million for the development of Psychonauts 2.
The company continued to build on its independent developer status and has promoted efforts to help other, smaller independent developers through its clout, including becoming a video game publisher for these titles. Double Fine has also been able to acquire rights to remaster some of the earlier LucasArts adventure games, including Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and Full Throttle. Microsoft purchased the studio in June 2019 after previously taking over Psychonauts 2's publishing.