GRIN

History

Founded in 1997 by the brothers Bo and Ulf Andersson, GRIN worked on a number of games throughout the years, ranging from PC to console and arcade titles. Though GRIN was based in Sweden, the company had two studios outside the country located in Jakarta and Barcelona. In January 2008 a second Swedish development studio was opened in Gothenburg.

In May 2009 after failing to acquire any development contracts for their Barcelona and Gothenburg offices, possibly due to the poor reception of Wanted: Weapons of Fate and Terminator: Salvation developed at these offices. GRIN was forced to shutdown the two offices as well as doing a significant cut in their Stockholm staff.

In August of 2009, Gamasutra and a few other sites reported that GRIN was experiencing financial trouble. Shortly thereafter, the company had to lay off several employees due to low sales for Wanted: Weapons of Fate, Terminator: Salvation and the latest Bionic Commando games. GRIN's last hit came in 2008 with their remake of Bionic Commando: Rearmed. It was their last game to gain critical success and to sell well.

On August 12, 2009, GRIN announced on their website that they were shutting down completely. On the official GRIN webpage the reason for the financial troubles were cited as being due to: "... too many publishers have been delaying their payments, causing an unbearable cashflow situation". It is not known which publishers this was referring too, but it might be related to "our unreleased masterpiece that we weren’t allowed to finish" also referenced in their farewell letter. This 'masterpiece' was probably a Final Fantasy XII spinoff codenamed Fortress ( referenced in this Kotaku article).

Logo

GRIN started off with just a logo before the company even had a name, which naturally gave the company the name GRIN. Throughout the years there have been several versions of the GRIN logo, with new gold teeth being added for every released game. By the time the company was closed down, the logo had eight gold teeth.

Offices

GRIN had many different offices around the world, including Stockholm, Barcelona, Gothenburg and Jakarta.

Stockholm

GRIN headquarters were located in Stockholm. They operated on two floors on Sergelgatan 22, in what's known as Hitechbuilding, which got its name during the internet booming days and now hosts very few – if any – internet companies. Before it closed, 130 people worked in the Stockholm office. Here they also had one rule: you must take your shoes off when you enter. In Sweden, it is a sign of disrespect and bad manners if you do not take your shoes off when going into someone's house. Since Bo and Ulf Andersson started GRIN in their basement, taking off shoes was natural. They continued that rule even when they grew bigger.

GRIN's Barcelona Office

Barcelona

GRIN opened their Barcelona office in 2007, housing about 70 employees. It was located on the Barcelona Beach Strip in the Torre Mapfre building, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Closed in May 2009.

GRIN's Jakarta Office

Jarkata

They opened this studio in the centre of Jakarta, Indonesia. It's used as a Quality Assurance building but was hardly ever used due to complications in shipping Sony and Microsoft test equipment to the region.

Games

Employee-Founded Studios

From the remains of the Gothenburg office Peter Björklund and a number of developers who were laid off from GRIN in May 2009 formed a new company, Outbreak Studios.

Members of the team at GRIN behind Bionic Commando: Rearmed formed a game development studio, Might & Delight, on April 16th, 2010. They are currently working an an unannounced retro-inspired title.

The founding Andersson brothers started their own company, Overkill Software, with a number former GRIN Stockholm employees, including renowned composer Simon Viklund.

The company Fatshark AB, where GRIN was a stakeholder, was not affected by the closure of GRIN and are continuing to develop Lead & Gold: Gangs of the Wild West using the well regarded GRIN technology, diesel.

Members of GRIN's sound design team formed a new audio house, FATHOM.