Ikarion Software GmbH

In the early 1990s Kingsoft GmbH (Located in Aachen, Germany's most western city) was well known as a budget game developer and publisher and delivered major stores like Toys'R'Us and Vobis in Germany. In 1993 Kingsoft's owner Fritz Schäfer had the idea to start a new full price range for PC and Amiga systems and therefore he founded Ikarion Software GmbH.

Throughout the first years the company focussed on business simulations, later they started to develop strategy games and Gameboy Advance Puzzle Games.

1998 Fritz Schäfer resigned his involvments with Ikarion and handed over the company to Norbert Beckers, Franz Stradal and Marc Oberhäuser. In 1999 the German publisher DTP Neue Medien GmbH bought stakes of Ikarion and financed several projects.

In August 2001 DTP went into finacial troubles and couldn't finance Ikarion anymore. During the administration time, Ikarion was not able to sign a final deal for the then-upcoming RPG Das Schwarze Auge: Armalion (Eidos, JoWood and Ubisoft were interested), so the company was closed in December 2001.

The core team still worked on the game and in May 2002 Franz Stradal managed to sign a deal with the German company Ascaron Entertainment GmbH. The team became Studio II Software GmbH (also located in Aachen, Germany) and reworked Armalion to the successful Sacred, which was released worldwide in 2004, seling 1.7 million copies by 2006. After releasing an expansion, as well as a sequel and its expansion, Studio II Software itself folded in 2009.