Techland began as a Polish distributor in 1991, originally translating and dealing educational software. Games were produced a few years later, when the company started to develop their own products, and publish those made by other developers. Speedway Manager was the first game made by the internal studio, which consisted of only one person at the time. Without much success, the company continued to produce games, mostly mediocre family software.
The year 2000 was a breakthrough for Techland, marked by the release of Crime Cities, a highly praised action game set in the future. It was also their first game to be released outside Poland. Then, in 2003, Techland released Chrome - a futuristic shooter made with their own game-engine, entitled Chrome Engine. This engine became a base for almost all future games made by the Polish company.
A period of stagnation was once again disrupted in 2006, with Call of Juarez. Not only was it the first game ever to use DirectX 10, but it was also the first Polish game to be released for Xbox 360. 1.5 million copies of the games were sold, and this huge intake of money allowed Techland to hire more developers. In the following years, the company also started a copy of well-known aggregates, called BazaRecenzji. This project was aimed at Polish users, but the website was eventually closed in 2011.
In 2009, Techland released a prequel to Call of Juarez, entitled Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. It was the first Polish title to be released simultaneously for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. However, Techland was already thinking about something bigger - Dead Island. This game was originally set to debut in 2008, but was delayed multiple times. Development was taking more and more resources, and games such as Chrome 2 and Warhound were suspended. Finally, in September 2011 Dead Island was released, followed by a big marketing campaign with the infamously misleading trailer made by Axis Productions. Despite many bugs, the game was well received and eventually shipped 4 million copies.
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