Climax Online

Overview

The company was founded as Anthill Studios in 1998 by Paul Carruthers. It was acquired by The Climax Group in June 2000 and renamed Climax Nottingham.

On 24th April 2001 it was announced 20 developers of the defunct studio Charybdis Limited would join Climax Online to finish Magic & Mayhem: The Art of Magic.

The team created the massively multiplayer online engine Leviathan and in 2002 a joint venture with Games Workshop Ltd. was established to create the MMORPG Warhammer Online (released in 2008 as Warhammer Online: The Age of Reckoning by Mythic Entertainment). The project was officially cancelled at Climax in 2004 as Games Workshop Ltd., which had the license, determined the costs would be too high. In June 2004 it became known the team had started work on a second game based on the Leviathan engine and in November 2004 the company was re-branded Climax Online.

The cancellation of a title they had been working on for more than two years shook the team and compromises had to be made to keep everyone employed. Most of the developers were transferred to work on MotoGP: Ultimate Racing Technology 3 and as soon as the project was finished, the studio as a whole was done for. A very small team was kept aboard to find funding for the Leviathan engine, while more than 20 people were let go around September 2005.

In October it became known certain developers of the division had founded Monumental Games Ltd.

[edit overview]