City Interactive was founded in 2002 through the merger of three video game companies: Lemon Interactive, We Open Eyes and Tatanka.[2] The company originally acted as a developer and publisher of budget-range games.[3] In 2007, City Interactive merged with Oni Games, a third-party publisher formed alongside City Interactive in 2002, and Detalion, an adventure game developer founded by Roland Pantoła, Maciej Miąsik, Danuta Sienkowska, Robert Ożóg, Łukasz Pisarek and Krzysztof Bar, when they left LK Avalon.[2] Also in 2007, City Interactive undertook its initial public offering and became a public company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.[4]
In 2008, City Interactive dropped their budget-range operations, which they wished to underline with the subsequent release of Sniper: Ghost Warrior in 2010.[3] In an interview with magazine MCV, the company stated that the success of the game led them to believe that they had made the right decisions in terms of strategy and product portfolio.[3] By June 2011, City Interactive employed a total of 150 people in its headquarters in Warsaw, its development studios in Rzeszów, Katowice, Poznań and Guildford, and its publishing offices in Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.[4] In 2012, City Interactive's development team adopted the name "CI Games",[2] and City Interactive changed its name entirely to CI Games in 2013.[5]
In February 2018, CI Games shrunk their development staff to 30 people.[6] According to chief executive officer Marek Tymiński, the measure had been taken due to many problems having occurred during the production of Sniper Ghost Warrior 3, even though the game itself had surpassed one million copies sold and had turned a profit for the company in the company's 2017 fiscal year by the time the decision was made.[7] In January 2019, CI Games established a new publishing label, United Label, for independent games. United Label is to help fund indie developers in exchange for a share of the games' revenue.[8]
From 2020 through to 2021, the number of CI Games employees increased significantly, with the current team now over 140 people and growing. Around eighty members of staff are directly involved in game production, with forty of those working on Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2, fifty on Lords of the Fallen, and the remainder forming the QA department.[9]
In January 2024, CI Games laid off 10% of its workforce. Lords of the Fallen developer Hexworks and Sniper Ghost Warrior developer Underdog were also affected.[10] Another 30 employees were laid off in May 2024.[11]
^Kucharczyk, Katarzyn (25 May 2021). "CI Games zwiększyło zyski. Akcje drożeją" [CI Games increased profits. The company's shares are going up.]. Parkiet (in Polish). Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 25 May 2021.
