This press-link page is only updated about once a
year, and is often out of date for lengthy periods. See the
Vendetta Online
game news and our
Facebook and Twitter feeds for more
recent posts of ours.
December 21st, 2020
MMORPG.com and MassivelyOP cover our latest discussion of capital ship debris, factional changes, and enhanced capship commands.
November 16th, 2020
Various MMO press sites have picked up news about our Chromebook support, trading improvements, and a new concept called "Enduring Content".
October 19th, 2020
MassivelyOP took a look at Vendetta Online on mobile and mobile-VR, exploring some of the early game.
August 16th, 2020
Vendetta Online goes Free to Play on all platforms, as reported by MassivelyOP and MMORPG.com. Previously, the game had a Subscription model on PC, but a Freemium model on mobile, while this change brought all platforms in line with the same business model. Although some in the press thought the timing might relate to the release of EVE Echoes, this business model change was in the works long before that game was even announced.
April 6th, 2020
As covered by MassivelyOP and others, Vendetta Online went completely and unequivocally "free" for two months, to try and offer some solace to people during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The goal was to make this a genuinely altruistic offering, so all new monetization of the game was shut down during the period.
January 13th, 2020
Further news is picked up by the MMO press around our Holiday Newsletter, and on-going developments trade, economics and other features.
August 23rd, 2019
Several sites, including Massively have published coverage of our August 2019 newsletter, including updates around player latency, and other technology changes.
October 26th, 2018
MassivelyOP provided covage of our October 2018 newsletter in this MMO news recap.
June 6th, 2018
News articles have begun appearing about the new ARM64 Native demo of Vendetta Online for Windows, prominently demoing with the first Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 devices at Computex in Taiwan. This makes Vendetta Online one of the first applications of any kind to debut as ARM64-native on Windows.
October 26th, 2017
Guild Software has released a new Benchmark called VendettaMark 2018, allowing cross-platform comparison between mobile and desktop hardware! See the original press release for more information.
September 21st, 2017
Vendetta Online has launched for Free on iPhone! As covered by MMORPG.com, Massively Overpowered and elsewhere. Check out the original press release here, or download the game from the Play Store.
March 30th, 2017
Vendetta Online has launched for Google's Daydream VR platform! As covered by VR Focus, MMORPG.com, the Virtual Report, and others, see the official press release, or download the game from the Play Store.
January 15th, 2017
YouTube GearVR reviewers EscapeVR have posted their top-10 list of The Best GearVR titles of 2016. Vendetta Online takes the #1 spot, beating out notable titles like Minecraft and others!
October 21st, 2016
Our friends over at UploadVR have posted a really nice article about our recent launch onto the Gear VR platform, including some cool video footage. Take a look!
October 20th, 2016
Release of Vendetta Online for GearVR. The game supports all GearVR devices other than the original Note 4 (which is too slow). It allows voice chat, voice-to-text chat, and also uses text-to-speech for mission updates, to optimize for the best possible gaming experience. A game controller (Steel Series, Moga, Razer, Nyko, etc) is strongly recommended. Also see the Press Release, picked up by VR Focus, Gamasutra, Trax Games, PXVR, SpaceGameJunkie, MMORPG.com, etc.
March 9th, 2016
Announcement of Vendetta Online's formal plans to support Virtual Reality through the Oculus Rift, Samsung GearVR, and HTC Vive has been released through this Press Release. The game will be shown with multiple partners at GDC 2016. Also picked up by VR Focus, RageZone, Massively, DroidGamers, and others.
December 3rd, 2015
The people over at VRFocus write a nice article detailing our re-introduction of 0.8 SDK support for the Oculus Rift.
November 30th, 2015
Our friends at Massively Overpowered are the first to pick up the news about the updated VR support in Vendetta Online, with enhancements launching for the Oculus Rift 0.8 SDK. Oculus themselves also retweeted some of our announcements, and we were inundated with questions, especially about whether we may suport the Gear VR (something we are evaluating).
August 20th, 2015
The gaming press picks up our announcement of advancements in supply-chain economics for our dynamic economy. These will play a big part in some of our upcoming gameplay.
May 22nd, 2015
MMOGames.com wrote a lengthy article comparing EVE Online to Vendetta Online, with our title coming out well in a number of areas (combat, player progression). Not bad, considering the massive difference in development team size and resources between the two titles (EVE has always had a 10x-50x larger development staff). Unfortunately, our newer DirectX 11 graphics/rendering engine was not out of beta at the time the comparison was made.
June 17th, 2014
"Suicidal Lemming", one of our long-time players (and we mean someone who has been a part of the VO community for over a decade) has gone to some difficulty to create a complete snapshot of the total release history of Vendetta Online, from debut on April 4th 2002 through June of 2014. Just from a posterity aspect alone, this is quite fascinating to read, we've made a mirror of his page here on our site, so people may peruse the history if they like.
June 2nd, 2014
Our announcement to players that we will be exploring mobile micro-transactions is picked up by the gaming press. These changes have no negative impacts on existing subscribers, only allowing us to work within the expectations of the mobile playerbase.
May 9th, 2014
Massively and many others pick up our latest newsletter about upcoming engine changes, new graphics, planned launches on Steam and elsewhere.
March 27th, 2014
At the 2014 Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, Guild Software CEO gives a presentation with ARM, looking at the recent past and future of Vendetta Online technology on mobile.
March 4th, 2014
Vendetta Online has been Greenlit for a launch on Steam! More information available on the Steam Site. Thanks to everyone who voted in support of the game!
December 26th, 2013
Vendetta Online crops up in a wrap of the biggest news stories of 2013, in the context of our groundbreaking early support for the Oculus Rift VR headset!
December 12th, 2013
Jef Reahard of Massively covers the new addition of long-term persistence of player mines. These long-lived weapons allow greater tactical and strategic defense of territory, among other things.
July 24th, 2013
Vendetta Online becomes the very first production MMORPG to release native support for the Oculus Rift! This is widely reported in the gaming press, including Polygon, MMORPG.com, PC Gamer and many others.
July 12th, 2013
Adun from OnRPG gives the PC version of VO a solid look, and comes away from the experience as a new subscriber!
June 1st, 2013
Vendetta Online launches on the OUYA micro-game console, in an effort to support this nascent, independent system. Best of luck to the indie console!
April 24th, 2013
Nathan from Mac|Life also waded into the game, with a fair-minded assessment of the pros and cons of our initial iPad release.
April 17th, 2013
Eli Hodapp of TouchArcade was very positive about the intial iPad release of Vendetta Online. Thanks Eli!
April 3rd, 2013
MJ Guthrie of Massively/Joystiq also sat down with us at GDC for an extensive overview of our plans for iOS, and a preview of the game
March 29th, 2013
Rob LeFebvre of 148apps met up with us at GDC to preview the upcoming iPad version of Vendetta Online.
January 18th, 2013
Darrel Etherington of TechCrunch names Vendetta Online "The Most Multi-Platform MMO Game Ever"!
October 19th, 2012
The Green Bay Press-Gazette contacted us for comment in a recent story on mobile game development, and we were happy to oblige (primary comments are on page two). All the best to fellow Wisconsin game developers ZyMo!
October 10th, 2012
Vendetta Online is officially released on the upcoming Windows 8 and Windows RT platforms! The game is available on the Windows Store for Desktop and Tablet users (ARM, x86, x64) running the release (RTM) build of Windows 8 or newer. For additional coverage, see: Massively/Joystiq, The Verge, RageZone, Gamasutra, etc.
August 26th, 2012
The kind folks over at Massively/Joystiq have written a nice piece on the early gameplay experience of Vendetta Online, available here. Take a look!
August 16th, 2012
At the request of Intel, Guild Software's John Bergman has written a brief article on the process of designing games for touchscreens, and adapting existing designs to work on the touch interface.
July 27th, 2012
The Milwaukee Business Journal conducted a broad interview with Guild Software's CEO, John Bergman, discussing the past, present and future of the company, its products, and the mobile industry.
June 6th, 2012
Many news outlets have picked up coverage from E3 and Computex of Qualcomm's demo of Vendetta Online for Windows RT. Among other things, Qualcomm actually demonstrated realtime gameplay between Taiwan and Los Angeles, with QC executives flying ships in both locations and playing against one another, as the E3 and Computex shows were running simultaneously. For more, see the coverage in: Hexus, Engadget, Tablet News, Daily Tech, and others.
April 20th, 2012
Vendetta Online celebrates a 10-year anniversary! That's right, it was a decade ago that Penny Arcade made their first post about us, bringing us many new users, some of whom are still with us today. Not long afterwards, Inside Mac Games also picked up the news. For more information, check out our official press release.
March 3rd, 2012
Our good friend Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal has made the difficult decision to leave journalism for a new career. Stan has been an ardent supporter of ours, over the past decade writing a dozen blog posts and print articles about our company, and raising local awareness of "Milwaukee's own game development studio". We will miss him greatly, but wish him the best in his new endevour. His final article mentions us. Good luck, Stan!
March 1st, 2012
In advance of presentation at the Game Developer's Conference, Guild Software has released a paper, entitled "A Method for Load-Time Conversion of DXTC Assets to ATC". It is hoped that this information will help other developers bringing their games to mobile. For more information, see: http://www.guildsoftware.com/papers/
February 17th, 2012
Massively has published an article on Vendetta Online as part of their column Some Assembly Required. It has some fair depth to it, relating a number of our strengths along with a few of our weaknesses. Take a look, it's worth the read! We're glad to see the reviewer enjoyed his time in our galaxy.
February 16th, 2012
The news about the launch of VO for the Kindle Fire has been picked up by a number of outlets, including DroidGamers and JSOnline.
February 10th, 2012
Vendetta Online is now available for the Kindle Fire! The game runs quite well, as the Fire is a pretty speedy little device. Owners can get VO through the internal AppStore, or at the link above. Take a look! For the money, the Kindle Fire's price to performance ratio is pretty impressive.
February 9th, 2012
Ubuntu has informed us that we're in the top 10 most-downloaded apps from the Ubuntu Software Center! We're big supporters of Linux, going all the way back to our alpha in 2002, and our retail launch in 2004 (one of the first retail titles ever to ship with a Linux build on the CD, along with Mac and Windows). We're thrilled to be a part of the next step in digital delivery on the platform.
January 5th, 2012
Stan over at the Journal-Sentinel wrote a nice little piece on our phone release. Also, a number of other mentions from the usual suspects, like MMORPG.com.
December 20th, 2011
Guild Software has officially launched Vendetta Online across a great many Android cellphones and handsets! After months of staged testing and limited releases, Vendetta Online is now available on Android phones with Froyo (2.2) or better, and based on the NVIDIA Tegra(tm) and Qualcomm Snapdragon(tm) family of processors, or those that use the PowerVR SGX family of GPUs (TI OMAP, some Samsung). For more information, see the official press release.
September 6th, 2011
Vendetta Online has launched on a single phone, currently exclusive to the SonyEricsson Xperia PLAY handset. The game is specially optimized to take advantage of the PLAY's excellent analog controls, and honestly gives one of the best mobile gameplay experiences we've seen with our title.
July 26th, 2011
Lenovo has launched the new IdeaPad K1 Tablet, based on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, and including a pre-installed copy of Vendetta Online! Owners of the IdeaPad K1 will receive a special extended trial of the game.
June 1st, 2011
Qualcomm has made a press release regarding their upcoming Snapdragon Game Pack, including a quote from Guild Software!
April 1st, 2011
Don't let the April 1st date fool you, Kotaku took a very serious and in-depth look at Vendetta Online on the Xoom (see the video); saying amongst other things "This is a deep game with an intuitive interface that works well, very well on the large screen of a tablet." Glad to hear it!
March 21st, 2011
According to the Android Market, Vendetta Online has been the #1 Paid app for the last two weeks! We're very excited about this strong response, beating out Angry Birds and other titles, despite our game only being available for the Motorola Xoom. We plan to make the game a free install in the immediate future, to match the PC versions. In the meantime, paid Android users have enjoyed a special extended trial period.
March 17th, 2011
Laptop Magazine has posted a first look at Vendetta Online for Android. They cite the high quality of the graphics, while bringing up some reasonable concerns over the control model (which has significantly expanded and improved since then).
March 9th, 2011
Android Community has posted an early review of Vendetta Online for Android! They end with the quote "Go buy the game, no matter who you are.", which we're happy to see!
March 9th, 2011
MMO Sanctuary has posted a mention of Vendetta Online bringing the MMO experience to mobile.
March 9th, 2011
MMO Crazy has also put up a mention of the release.
March 8th, 2011
MMORPG.com has picked up the notice of our formal launch onto the Android Market!
March 8th, 2011
MMO Reporter has also posted an article about the launch of VO for mobile.
March 7th, 2011
Vendetta Online has been formally launched in the Android Market! For more information see the official press release.
February 25th, 2011
Stan Miller of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has posted a nice piece on his blog, giving some of the backstory to the new Verizon TV ad-placement, as well as our plans for the future. A different version of the article is running in the print edition of the paper.
February 25th, 2011
NVIDIA and Gamerlive.TV have posted an interview from last June at the E3 Expo, when Guild Software CEO John Bergman was demonstrating the game running on NVIDIA's Tegra 2 platform.
February 24th, 2011
Vendetta Online has been featured in a new prime-time television ad from Verizon, demonstrating the powerful gaming capabilities of the Motorola Xoom tablet (also launched today).
February 21st, 2011
A brief preview and hands-on of Vendetta Online for Android has been posted by Pocket Gamer. This is based on the showing of the game with Google at Mobile World Congress. Additionally, a video of the game and interview has been posted over at Android Pimps.
January 26th, 2011
Ubuntu Gamer has posted a "first look" at Vendetta Online for Ubuntu. They have said of the game "Vendetta Online is defentily worth checking out, it is an excellent MMO experience which is lacking on the Linux platform."
January 7th, 2011
We conducted several interviews at the CES show in Vegas, demonstrating the prototype version of Vendetta Online for Android. Interviews include this video interview with Android and Me, as well as one with Droid Gamers.
January 5th, 2011
Motorola has formally announced their upcoming Xoom Android Tablet and other devices today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Guild Software's own CEO, John Bergman, is quoted in the the Motorola Press Release.
December 1st, 2010
Vendetta Online™ has been formally launched in the Ubuntu Linux Software Center! This new feature of Ubuntu 10.10 adds "App Store" like functionality to the most popular Linux distro. We worked extensively with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to make this happen, and are proud to be one of their launch partners. We hope the Software Center will help make Linux a more accessible operating system choice for millions more desktop users.
June 17th, 2010
Zeevex™ and Guild Software™ are partnering to make Vendetta Online™ subscription purchases available in more than 31,000 retail locations across the US, including Walgreens, 7-11, and more. See the press release for more information.
June 10th, 2010
Guild Software has announced an upcoming Android™ version of Vendetta Online! Read the full press release here. This news has also been picked up by The Inquirer, Massively, Slashdot (front page), and a very wide variety of other sites.
March 26th, 2010
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sits down with our CEO, John Bergman, to discuss a few high points of the recent Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco.
March 6th, 2010
The engine that powers Vendetta Online is now being announced as an upcoming MMO middleware product! The NAOS Engine brings a variety of online game development tools to the table, combined with a proven and highly scalable engine. The press release is also available.
January 31st, 2010
Today Blues News posted our announcement of the newly launched Station Conquest system. We hope to greatly expand this new gameplay mechanic over the coming months.
January 16th, 2010
Guild Software has launched a new company website design! Chances are, you're probably looking at it right now. We intend to add a lot more content to this corporate site over the coming months; this site update makes a refreshing change from our previous, 11-year-old site design.
December 19th, 2009
Added to our general Five Year Celebration, today we've launched our "Happy Holidays to Long Lost Vets" promotion: All unsubscribed accounts that were last subbed in September or earlier may play for free through January 1st!
November 3rd, 2009
Vendetta Online is now celebrating our five year anniversary! To help ring in this milestone, we'll be offering many special promotions, new merchandise, and several large-scale Dev-run game Events! Additionally, as a gift to our users, current subscribers receive access to a special Anniversary Edition Vulture. This celebration will run through the Holidays of 2009.
October 23rd, 2009
Apple has just posted our short HD trailer to their Apple Games site. According to them, we are officially the first HD game trailer on Apple.com!
July 24th, 2009
MMORPG has just posted a new article on Points of Interest in Vendetta Online. Take a look, and read about some of the interesting locations within the game.
July 22nd, 2009
Guild Software and MMOsite.com have teamed up to offer a special trial key giveaway. These promotional two-week trial keys may be used on any account that has not been previously subscribed, and are free on the MMOsite link above!
July 8th, 2009
MMORPG.com has posted another great feature article on VO, this time covering the recent expansion of dynamic warfare, as well as CTC and other game mechanics.
June 2nd, 2009
Gaming site MMORPG.com has posted a nice article about our recent expansions in multi-player ships, and other areas of gameplay.
May 6th, 2009
New Linux gaming site Linux Game Zoo has posted a developer interview with our project lead, John Bergman. Some of the questions go back many years, to the inception of our company and how we started in this industry.
April 8th, 2009
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has posted an interview with our CEO, John Bergman, mostly pertaining to a meeting of the Madison IGDA.
March 30th, 2009
Vendetta Online has been briefly reviewed in the April edition of the French print magazine "SvmMac". The review appears to be positive (our French skills are limited), and we appreciate them taking a look and mailing us a copy.
February 26th, 2009
A video has been posted of our CEO, John Bergman, giving an impromptu (unplanned) presentation of Vendetta Online at the meeting of the International Game Developer's Association, Madison Chapter.
February 10th, 2009
Guild Software, makers of Vendetta Online, have been voted a MMOSite.com 2008 Reader's Choice Award for "Favorite Game Company", beating out heavy hitters such as Blizzard Entertainment, NCsoft, Square-Enix and SOE. We are very grateful to our dedicated and loyal userbase who voted us to this position. We intend to continue being the communicative, responsive company you have come to know; taking the game to new levels, while remaining attentive to player feedback.
December 10th, 2008
Today Vendetta Online and MMORPG.com are partnering to offer free one-month trial keys to anyone who uses the free registration process on MMORPG.com. Up to 2500 keys will be distributed, and may be applied to any account that has not been previously subscribed. See the promo page on MMORPG.com for more information.
December 1st, 2008
Vendetta Online appears in this month's print edition of Linux Format Magazine. We have not yet seen the review (they are sending us a copy), but we're told it's both lengthy and positive.
November 9th, 2008
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has written a very nice little profile of Guild Software, appearing in the Cue section of today's print paper, as well as online (only minor discrepancy, we launched in 2004, not 2007). Thanks Stan!
October 25th, 2008
An online amateur-game-developer convention has posted a lengthy interview with Guild Software's lead developer, John Bergman.
October 19th, 2008
Slashdot posts about the release of Vendetta Online™'s new Player Contribution Corps. See the original press release here.
July 1st, 2008
TeamSpeak Systems GmbH and Guild Software, Inc announce their partnership, bringing integrated voice chat to all client platforms of Vendetta Online™! This makes VO the very first product to publicly demonstrate the new TeamSpeak 3 SDK!
February 14th, 2008
Chinese gaming site 17173.com apparently mentions VO. We hope they liked it, since we're not sure what they said.
December 2nd, 2007
MMO site Massively.com has posted a first look at Vendetta Online™.
July 3rd, 2007
MacApper has posted a positive mini-review of Vendetta Online.
May 21st, 2007
MMO site QuickJump has posted a brief update on the state of Vendetta Online.
June 21st, 2006
BlogCritics has posted a five-star review of Vendetta Online, comparing it to Wing Commander Privateer!
May 31st, 2006
QuickJump has posted a list of changes to the game over the past year.
February 8th, 2006
Guild Software's CEO, John Bergman has been interviewed for Wisconsin Technology Network!
August 26th, 2005
IMG posts a beginners guide to Vendetta Online.
August 25th, 2005
Inside Mac Games has posted a nice review of the game!
May 24th, 2005
Craig Coppola reviews Vendetta Online™ for Game Industry News.
February 23rd, 2005
Gamespot posts a positive review of VO.
February 14th, 2005
ESCmag posts a new review of VO.
January 19th, 2005
MacWorld Magazine has given VO four stars! Thanks, Peter Cohen!
January 12th, 2005
IGN has posted a tough, but fair look at VO. (UPDATE: The game has changed considerably since this review).
December 15th, 2004
GameZone has posted a new review of Vendetta Online™.
December 3rd, 2004
Inside Mac Games interviews Guild Software's lead developer, John Bergman.
November 4th, 2004
MMO gaming site MMHell posts a brief developer profile of all four members of the Guild Software team.
November 4th, 2004
GameSpy covers the games shipped on this date, including VO!
November 1st, 2004
Vendetta Online™ has officially launched! See the official site for details.
October 28th, 2004
IGN's RPG Vault posts Part 2 of the team Q&A.
October 26th, 2004
Inside Mac Games posts a new preview of Vendetta Online.
October 21st, 2004
Apple has posted a lengthy article about Vendetta Online™ to the Apple Games site!
October 15th, 2004
IGN RPG Vault posts a First View of Vendetta Online™.
July 23rd, 2004
IGN's RPG Vault has posted Part 1 of an interview with Guild Software's lead developer.
June 4th, 2004
GameSpy covers Guild Software partnering with Strategy First for retail publishing of Vendetta Online in North America.
May 28th, 2004
IMG covers some of our news announcements regarding the ongoing development of Vendetta Online.
May 11th, 2004
GameSpy picks up our E3 preview announcement.
These earlier links are mostly provided to show historical milestones and struggles on our journey, for general interest. Prior to this point, most articles are related to the free/public "Vendetta Test" alpha version of VO, while most after this relate to the final "Vendetta Online" product that shipped in November of 2004. Additionally, the bulk of these earlier articles are from Inside Mac Games, as GameSpy and most other sites of the era no longer have anything online from this time period.
May 10th, 2004
Inside Mac Games reveals a major website update for the Vendetta Test.
May 5th, 2004
Inside Mac Games covers some patch updates to the public/free Vendetta Test.
February 25th, 2004
IMG covers some server changes with the Vendetta Test. At this point we migrated from FreeBSD 4.x to Linux on our server, as that had more development tools available. We used Valgrind and oprofile to help optimize the game's server, testing it under load. Some years later we would migrate back to FreeBSD for our server cluster, this time to 6.x and 7.x
February 9th, 2004
IMG relates Guild Software finding a new investor, reviving the company and moving on with the business of game development. This experience only strengthened our resolve, and we redoubled our efforts. Amazingly, we found a publisher within a few months, and things started to really fall into place.
January 13th, 2004
IMG covers our continuing financial difficulties, with some updates.
December 30th, 2003
Linux Gamers covers the impending demise of Guild Software, as we practically went out of business, our funding exhausted. This was a very painful time for us, but we learned a great deal.
April 21st, 2003
IMG covers the major 3.2 update of the public and free Vendetta Test, a major jump on the road to being a full-blown MMO.
December 2nd, 2002
IMG relates some of the new changes in the 3.1.5 release of the public Vendetta Test.
September 17th, 2002
IMG covers the 3.0 release of the public, multiplatform Vendetta Test.
August 29th, 2002
IMG relates some details of the upcoming 3.0 release of the public/free Vendetta Test. 3.0 was a major turning point in the MMO's development, where the game went from a trivial FPS-esque game (with powerups, and the like), to a persistent character-driven game with a dynamic economy.
April 22nd, 2002
Inside Mac Games announces the MacOS X release of the Vendetta Test (the public/free game engine testbed that preceeded Vendetta Online).
April 19th, 2002
Penny Arcade were the first to cover the multiplatform release of the free Vendetta Test. At least, they did for a few hours :). Although the PA newspost mishap on that day cut short some of our exposure, we have always been grateful to them for our first influx of users. Some of those players are still with us today.
October 29th, 2001
IMG covers a one of our developers posting to an early MacOS X developer mailing-list, during the initial port process of the game to the Mac. OS X was brand-new at this time, and we were an early adopter, with many of the issues inherent in developing for a relatively new platform (driver issues, documentation, etc). It was clearly a learning experience for us. Despite this being a somewhat embarassing post, it is humorous in retrospect, and is one of the earliest press mentions of our title. Andy posted a response in the comments, to try and clarify things at the time.
Earlier News
From 1998 through the end of 2001, the development of our game did not receive much press coverage, and none of it appears to be online anymore. During this period, we built our game engine with the expectation of demonstrating it to a publisher, who would then fund the expansion of the team and construction of the actual "game". Years of E3 meetings, however, did not live up to our hopes, and we eventually released the public/free "Vendetta Test" in 2002, both to prove and tune our engine with a live userbase, as well as hopefully gaining some exposure in the gaming press.
December 21st, 2020
MMORPG.com and MassivelyOP cover our latest discussion of capital ship debris, factional changes, and enhanced capship commands.
November 16th, 2020
Various MMO press sites have picked up news about our Chromebook support, trading improvements, and a new concept called "Enduring Content".
October 19th, 2020
MassivelyOP took a look at Vendetta Online on mobile and mobile-VR, exploring some of the early game.
August 16th, 2020
Vendetta Online goes Free to Play on all platforms, as reported by MassivelyOP and MMORPG.com. Previously, the game had a Subscription model on PC, but a Freemium model on mobile, while this change brought all platforms in line with the same business model. Although some in the press thought the timing might relate to the release of EVE Echoes, this business model change was in the works long before that game was even announced.
April 6th, 2020
As covered by MassivelyOP and others, Vendetta Online went completely and unequivocally "free" for two months, to try and offer some solace to people during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The goal was to make this a genuinely altruistic offering, so all new monetization of the game was shut down during the period.
January 13th, 2020
Further news is picked up by the MMO press around our Holiday Newsletter, and on-going developments trade, economics and other features.
August 23rd, 2019
Several sites, including Massively have published coverage of our August 2019 newsletter, including updates around player latency, and other technology changes.
October 26th, 2018
MassivelyOP provided covage of our October 2018 newsletter in this MMO news recap.
June 6th, 2018
News articles have begun appearing about the new ARM64 Native demo of Vendetta Online for Windows, prominently demoing with the first Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 devices at Computex in Taiwan. This makes Vendetta Online one of the first applications of any kind to debut as ARM64-native on Windows.
October 26th, 2017
Guild Software has released a new Benchmark called VendettaMark 2018, allowing cross-platform comparison between mobile and desktop hardware! See the original press release for more information.
September 21st, 2017
Vendetta Online has launched for Free on iPhone! As covered by MMORPG.com, Massively Overpowered and elsewhere. Check out the original press release here, or download the game from the Play Store.
March 30th, 2017
Vendetta Online has launched for Google's Daydream VR platform! As covered by VR Focus, MMORPG.com, the Virtual Report, and others, see the official press release, or download the game from the Play Store.
January 15th, 2017
YouTube GearVR reviewers EscapeVR have posted their top-10 list of The Best GearVR titles of 2016. Vendetta Online takes the #1 spot, beating out notable titles like Minecraft and others!
October 21st, 2016
Our friends over at UploadVR have posted a really nice article about our recent launch onto the Gear VR platform, including some cool video footage. Take a look!
October 20th, 2016
Release of Vendetta Online for GearVR. The game supports all GearVR devices other than the original Note 4 (which is too slow). It allows voice chat, voice-to-text chat, and also uses text-to-speech for mission updates, to optimize for the best possible gaming experience. A game controller (Steel Series, Moga, Razer, Nyko, etc) is strongly recommended. Also see the Press Release, picked up by VR Focus, Gamasutra, Trax Games, PXVR, SpaceGameJunkie, MMORPG.com, etc.
March 9th, 2016
Announcement of Vendetta Online's formal plans to support Virtual Reality through the Oculus Rift, Samsung GearVR, and HTC Vive has been released through this Press Release. The game will be shown with multiple partners at GDC 2016. Also picked up by VR Focus, RageZone, Massively, DroidGamers, and others.
December 3rd, 2015
The people over at VRFocus write a nice article detailing our re-introduction of 0.8 SDK support for the Oculus Rift.
November 30th, 2015
Our friends at Massively Overpowered are the first to pick up the news about the updated VR support in Vendetta Online, with enhancements launching for the Oculus Rift 0.8 SDK. Oculus themselves also retweeted some of our announcements, and we were inundated with questions, especially about whether we may suport the Gear VR (something we are evaluating).
August 20th, 2015
The gaming press picks up our announcement of advancements in supply-chain economics for our dynamic economy. These will play a big part in some of our upcoming gameplay.
May 22nd, 2015
MMOGames.com wrote a lengthy article comparing EVE Online to Vendetta Online, with our title coming out well in a number of areas (combat, player progression). Not bad, considering the massive difference in development team size and resources between the two titles (EVE has always had a 10x-50x larger development staff). Unfortunately, our newer DirectX 11 graphics/rendering engine was not out of beta at the time the comparison was made.
June 17th, 2014
"Suicidal Lemming", one of our long-time players (and we mean someone who has been a part of the VO community for over a decade) has gone to some difficulty to create a complete snapshot of the total release history of Vendetta Online, from debut on April 4th 2002 through June of 2014. Just from a posterity aspect alone, this is quite fascinating to read, we've made a mirror of his page here on our site, so people may peruse the history if they like.
June 2nd, 2014
Our announcement to players that we will be exploring mobile micro-transactions is picked up by the gaming press. These changes have no negative impacts on existing subscribers, only allowing us to work within the expectations of the mobile playerbase.
May 9th, 2014
Massively and many others pick up our latest newsletter about upcoming engine changes, new graphics, planned launches on Steam and elsewhere.
March 27th, 2014
At the 2014 Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, Guild Software CEO gives a presentation with ARM, looking at the recent past and future of Vendetta Online technology on mobile.
March 4th, 2014
Vendetta Online has been Greenlit for a launch on Steam! More information available on the Steam Site. Thanks to everyone who voted in support of the game!
December 26th, 2013
Vendetta Online crops up in a wrap of the biggest news stories of 2013, in the context of our groundbreaking early support for the Oculus Rift VR headset!
December 12th, 2013
Jef Reahard of Massively covers the new addition of long-term persistence of player mines. These long-lived weapons allow greater tactical and strategic defense of territory, among other things.
July 24th, 2013
Vendetta Online becomes the very first production MMORPG to release native support for the Oculus Rift! This is widely reported in the gaming press, including Polygon, MMORPG.com, PC Gamer and many others.
July 12th, 2013
Adun from OnRPG gives the PC version of VO a solid look, and comes away from the experience as a new subscriber!
June 1st, 2013
Vendetta Online launches on the OUYA micro-game console, in an effort to support this nascent, independent system. Best of luck to the indie console!
April 24th, 2013
Nathan from Mac|Life also waded into the game, with a fair-minded assessment of the pros and cons of our initial iPad release.
April 17th, 2013
Eli Hodapp of TouchArcade was very positive about the intial iPad release of Vendetta Online. Thanks Eli!
April 3rd, 2013
MJ Guthrie of Massively/Joystiq also sat down with us at GDC for an extensive overview of our plans for iOS, and a preview of the game
March 29th, 2013
Rob LeFebvre of 148apps met up with us at GDC to preview the upcoming iPad version of Vendetta Online.
January 18th, 2013
Darrel Etherington of TechCrunch names Vendetta Online "The Most Multi-Platform MMO Game Ever"!
October 19th, 2012
The Green Bay Press-Gazette contacted us for comment in a recent story on mobile game development, and we were happy to oblige (primary comments are on page two). All the best to fellow Wisconsin game developers ZyMo!
October 10th, 2012
Vendetta Online is officially released on the upcoming Windows 8 and Windows RT platforms! The game is available on the Windows Store for Desktop and Tablet users (ARM, x86, x64) running the release (RTM) build of Windows 8 or newer. For additional coverage, see: Massively/Joystiq, The Verge, RageZone, Gamasutra, etc.
August 26th, 2012
The kind folks over at Massively/Joystiq have written a nice piece on the early gameplay experience of Vendetta Online, available here. Take a look!
August 16th, 2012
At the request of Intel, Guild Software's John Bergman has written a brief article on the process of designing games for touchscreens, and adapting existing designs to work on the touch interface.
July 27th, 2012
The Milwaukee Business Journal conducted a broad interview with Guild Software's CEO, John Bergman, discussing the past, present and future of the company, its products, and the mobile industry.
June 6th, 2012
Many news outlets have picked up coverage from E3 and Computex of Qualcomm's demo of Vendetta Online for Windows RT. Among other things, Qualcomm actually demonstrated realtime gameplay between Taiwan and Los Angeles, with QC executives flying ships in both locations and playing against one another, as the E3 and Computex shows were running simultaneously. For more, see the coverage in: Hexus, Engadget, Tablet News, Daily Tech, and others.
April 20th, 2012
Vendetta Online celebrates a 10-year anniversary! That's right, it was a decade ago that Penny Arcade made their first post about us, bringing us many new users, some of whom are still with us today. Not long afterwards, Inside Mac Games also picked up the news. For more information, check out our official press release.
March 3rd, 2012
Our good friend Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal has made the difficult decision to leave journalism for a new career. Stan has been an ardent supporter of ours, over the past decade writing a dozen blog posts and print articles about our company, and raising local awareness of "Milwaukee's own game development studio". We will miss him greatly, but wish him the best in his new endevour. His final article mentions us. Good luck, Stan!
March 1st, 2012
In advance of presentation at the Game Developer's Conference, Guild Software has released a paper, entitled "A Method for Load-Time Conversion of DXTC Assets to ATC". It is hoped that this information will help other developers bringing their games to mobile. For more information, see: http://www.guildsoftware.com/papers/
February 17th, 2012
Massively has published an article on Vendetta Online as part of their column Some Assembly Required. It has some fair depth to it, relating a number of our strengths along with a few of our weaknesses. Take a look, it's worth the read! We're glad to see the reviewer enjoyed his time in our galaxy.
February 16th, 2012
The news about the launch of VO for the Kindle Fire has been picked up by a number of outlets, including DroidGamers and JSOnline.
February 10th, 2012
Vendetta Online is now available for the Kindle Fire! The game runs quite well, as the Fire is a pretty speedy little device. Owners can get VO through the internal AppStore, or at the link above. Take a look! For the money, the Kindle Fire's price to performance ratio is pretty impressive.
February 9th, 2012
Ubuntu has informed us that we're in the top 10 most-downloaded apps from the Ubuntu Software Center! We're big supporters of Linux, going all the way back to our alpha in 2002, and our retail launch in 2004 (one of the first retail titles ever to ship with a Linux build on the CD, along with Mac and Windows). We're thrilled to be a part of the next step in digital delivery on the platform.
January 5th, 2012
Stan over at the Journal-Sentinel wrote a nice little piece on our phone release. Also, a number of other mentions from the usual suspects, like MMORPG.com.
December 20th, 2011
Guild Software has officially launched Vendetta Online across a great many Android cellphones and handsets! After months of staged testing and limited releases, Vendetta Online is now available on Android phones with Froyo (2.2) or better, and based on the NVIDIA Tegra(tm) and Qualcomm Snapdragon(tm) family of processors, or those that use the PowerVR SGX family of GPUs (TI OMAP, some Samsung). For more information, see the official press release.
September 6th, 2011
Vendetta Online has launched on a single phone, currently exclusive to the SonyEricsson Xperia PLAY handset. The game is specially optimized to take advantage of the PLAY's excellent analog controls, and honestly gives one of the best mobile gameplay experiences we've seen with our title.
July 26th, 2011
Lenovo has launched the new IdeaPad K1 Tablet, based on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, and including a pre-installed copy of Vendetta Online! Owners of the IdeaPad K1 will receive a special extended trial of the game.
June 1st, 2011
Qualcomm has made a press release regarding their upcoming Snapdragon Game Pack, including a quote from Guild Software!
April 1st, 2011
Don't let the April 1st date fool you, Kotaku took a very serious and in-depth look at Vendetta Online on the Xoom (see the video); saying amongst other things "This is a deep game with an intuitive interface that works well, very well on the large screen of a tablet." Glad to hear it!
March 21st, 2011
According to the Android Market, Vendetta Online has been the #1 Paid app for the last two weeks! We're very excited about this strong response, beating out Angry Birds and other titles, despite our game only being available for the Motorola Xoom. We plan to make the game a free install in the immediate future, to match the PC versions. In the meantime, paid Android users have enjoyed a special extended trial period.
March 17th, 2011
Laptop Magazine has posted a first look at Vendetta Online for Android. They cite the high quality of the graphics, while bringing up some reasonable concerns over the control model (which has significantly expanded and improved since then).
March 9th, 2011
Android Community has posted an early review of Vendetta Online for Android! They end with the quote "Go buy the game, no matter who you are.", which we're happy to see!
March 9th, 2011
MMO Sanctuary has posted a mention of Vendetta Online bringing the MMO experience to mobile.
March 9th, 2011
MMO Crazy has also put up a mention of the release.
March 8th, 2011
MMORPG.com has picked up the notice of our formal launch onto the Android Market!
March 8th, 2011
MMO Reporter has also posted an article about the launch of VO for mobile.
March 7th, 2011
Vendetta Online has been formally launched in the Android Market! For more information see the official press release.
February 25th, 2011
Stan Miller of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has posted a nice piece on his blog, giving some of the backstory to the new Verizon TV ad-placement, as well as our plans for the future. A different version of the article is running in the print edition of the paper.
February 25th, 2011
NVIDIA and Gamerlive.TV have posted an interview from last June at the E3 Expo, when Guild Software CEO John Bergman was demonstrating the game running on NVIDIA's Tegra 2 platform.
February 24th, 2011
Vendetta Online has been featured in a new prime-time television ad from Verizon, demonstrating the powerful gaming capabilities of the Motorola Xoom tablet (also launched today).
February 21st, 2011
A brief preview and hands-on of Vendetta Online for Android has been posted by Pocket Gamer. This is based on the showing of the game with Google at Mobile World Congress. Additionally, a video of the game and interview has been posted over at Android Pimps.
January 26th, 2011
Ubuntu Gamer has posted a "first look" at Vendetta Online for Ubuntu. They have said of the game "Vendetta Online is defentily worth checking out, it is an excellent MMO experience which is lacking on the Linux platform."
January 7th, 2011
We conducted several interviews at the CES show in Vegas, demonstrating the prototype version of Vendetta Online for Android. Interviews include this video interview with Android and Me, as well as one with Droid Gamers.
January 5th, 2011
Motorola has formally announced their upcoming Xoom Android Tablet and other devices today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Guild Software's own CEO, John Bergman, is quoted in the the Motorola Press Release.
December 1st, 2010
Vendetta Online™ has been formally launched in the Ubuntu Linux Software Center! This new feature of Ubuntu 10.10 adds "App Store" like functionality to the most popular Linux distro. We worked extensively with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to make this happen, and are proud to be one of their launch partners. We hope the Software Center will help make Linux a more accessible operating system choice for millions more desktop users.
June 17th, 2010
Zeevex™ and Guild Software™ are partnering to make Vendetta Online™ subscription purchases available in more than 31,000 retail locations across the US, including Walgreens, 7-11, and more. See the press release for more information.
June 10th, 2010
Guild Software has announced an upcoming Android™ version of Vendetta Online! Read the full press release here. This news has also been picked up by The Inquirer, Massively, Slashdot (front page), and a very wide variety of other sites.
March 26th, 2010
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sits down with our CEO, John Bergman, to discuss a few high points of the recent Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco.
March 6th, 2010
The engine that powers Vendetta Online is now being announced as an upcoming MMO middleware product! The NAOS Engine brings a variety of online game development tools to the table, combined with a proven and highly scalable engine. The press release is also available.
January 31st, 2010
Today Blues News posted our announcement of the newly launched Station Conquest system. We hope to greatly expand this new gameplay mechanic over the coming months.
January 16th, 2010
Guild Software has launched a new company website design! Chances are, you're probably looking at it right now. We intend to add a lot more content to this corporate site over the coming months; this site update makes a refreshing change from our previous, 11-year-old site design.
December 19th, 2009
Added to our general Five Year Celebration, today we've launched our "Happy Holidays to Long Lost Vets" promotion: All unsubscribed accounts that were last subbed in September or earlier may play for free through January 1st!
November 3rd, 2009
Vendetta Online is now celebrating our five year anniversary! To help ring in this milestone, we'll be offering many special promotions, new merchandise, and several large-scale Dev-run game Events! Additionally, as a gift to our users, current subscribers receive access to a special Anniversary Edition Vulture. This celebration will run through the Holidays of 2009.
October 23rd, 2009
Apple has just posted our short HD trailer to their Apple Games site. According to them, we are officially the first HD game trailer on Apple.com!
July 24th, 2009
MMORPG has just posted a new article on Points of Interest in Vendetta Online. Take a look, and read about some of the interesting locations within the game.
July 22nd, 2009
Guild Software and MMOsite.com have teamed up to offer a special trial key giveaway. These promotional two-week trial keys may be used on any account that has not been previously subscribed, and are free on the MMOsite link above!
July 8th, 2009
MMORPG.com has posted another great feature article on VO, this time covering the recent expansion of dynamic warfare, as well as CTC and other game mechanics.
June 2nd, 2009
Gaming site MMORPG.com has posted a nice article about our recent expansions in multi-player ships, and other areas of gameplay.
May 6th, 2009
New Linux gaming site Linux Game Zoo has posted a developer interview with our project lead, John Bergman. Some of the questions go back many years, to the inception of our company and how we started in this industry.
April 8th, 2009
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has posted an interview with our CEO, John Bergman, mostly pertaining to a meeting of the Madison IGDA.
March 30th, 2009
Vendetta Online has been briefly reviewed in the April edition of the French print magazine "SvmMac". The review appears to be positive (our French skills are limited), and we appreciate them taking a look and mailing us a copy.
February 26th, 2009
A video has been posted of our CEO, John Bergman, giving an impromptu (unplanned) presentation of Vendetta Online at the meeting of the International Game Developer's Association, Madison Chapter.
February 10th, 2009
Guild Software, makers of Vendetta Online, have been voted a MMOSite.com 2008 Reader's Choice Award for "Favorite Game Company", beating out heavy hitters such as Blizzard Entertainment, NCsoft, Square-Enix and SOE. We are very grateful to our dedicated and loyal userbase who voted us to this position. We intend to continue being the communicative, responsive company you have come to know; taking the game to new levels, while remaining attentive to player feedback.
December 10th, 2008
Today Vendetta Online and MMORPG.com are partnering to offer free one-month trial keys to anyone who uses the free registration process on MMORPG.com. Up to 2500 keys will be distributed, and may be applied to any account that has not been previously subscribed. See the promo page on MMORPG.com for more information.
December 1st, 2008
Vendetta Online appears in this month's print edition of Linux Format Magazine. We have not yet seen the review (they are sending us a copy), but we're told it's both lengthy and positive.
November 9th, 2008
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has written a very nice little profile of Guild Software, appearing in the Cue section of today's print paper, as well as online (only minor discrepancy, we launched in 2004, not 2007). Thanks Stan!
October 25th, 2008
An online amateur-game-developer convention has posted a lengthy interview with Guild Software's lead developer, John Bergman.
October 19th, 2008
Slashdot posts about the release of Vendetta Online™'s new Player Contribution Corps. See the original press release here.
July 1st, 2008
TeamSpeak Systems GmbH and Guild Software, Inc announce their partnership, bringing integrated voice chat to all client platforms of Vendetta Online™! This makes VO the very first product to publicly demonstrate the new TeamSpeak 3 SDK!
February 14th, 2008
Chinese gaming site 17173.com apparently mentions VO. We hope they liked it, since we're not sure what they said.
December 2nd, 2007
MMO site Massively.com has posted a first look at Vendetta Online™.
July 3rd, 2007
MacApper has posted a positive mini-review of Vendetta Online.
May 21st, 2007
MMO site QuickJump has posted a brief update on the state of Vendetta Online.
June 21st, 2006
BlogCritics has posted a five-star review of Vendetta Online, comparing it to Wing Commander Privateer!
May 31st, 2006
QuickJump has posted a list of changes to the game over the past year.
February 8th, 2006
Guild Software's CEO, John Bergman has been interviewed for Wisconsin Technology Network!
August 26th, 2005
IMG posts a beginners guide to Vendetta Online.
August 25th, 2005
Inside Mac Games has posted a nice review of the game!
May 24th, 2005
Craig Coppola reviews Vendetta Online™ for Game Industry News.
February 23rd, 2005
Gamespot posts a positive review of VO.
February 14th, 2005
ESCmag posts a new review of VO.
January 19th, 2005
MacWorld Magazine has given VO four stars! Thanks, Peter Cohen!
January 12th, 2005
IGN has posted a tough, but fair look at VO. (UPDATE: The game has changed considerably since this review).
December 15th, 2004
GameZone has posted a new review of Vendetta Online™.
December 3rd, 2004
Inside Mac Games interviews Guild Software's lead developer, John Bergman.
November 4th, 2004
MMO gaming site MMHell posts a brief developer profile of all four members of the Guild Software team.
November 4th, 2004
GameSpy covers the games shipped on this date, including VO!
November 1st, 2004
Vendetta Online™ has officially launched! See the official site for details.
October 28th, 2004
IGN's RPG Vault posts Part 2 of the team Q&A.
October 26th, 2004
Inside Mac Games posts a new preview of Vendetta Online.
October 21st, 2004
Apple has posted a lengthy article about Vendetta Online™ to the Apple Games site!
October 15th, 2004
IGN RPG Vault posts a First View of Vendetta Online™.
July 23rd, 2004
IGN's RPG Vault has posted Part 1 of an interview with Guild Software's lead developer.
June 4th, 2004
GameSpy covers Guild Software partnering with Strategy First for retail publishing of Vendetta Online in North America.
May 28th, 2004
IMG covers some of our news announcements regarding the ongoing development of Vendetta Online.
May 11th, 2004
GameSpy picks up our E3 preview announcement.
These earlier links are mostly provided to show historical milestones and struggles on our journey, for general interest. Prior to this point, most articles are related to the free/public "Vendetta Test" alpha version of VO, while most after this relate to the final "Vendetta Online" product that shipped in November of 2004. Additionally, the bulk of these earlier articles are from Inside Mac Games, as GameSpy and most other sites of the era no longer have anything online from this time period.
May 10th, 2004
Inside Mac Games reveals a major website update for the Vendetta Test.
May 5th, 2004
Inside Mac Games covers some patch updates to the public/free Vendetta Test.
February 25th, 2004
IMG covers some server changes with the Vendetta Test. At this point we migrated from FreeBSD 4.x to Linux on our server, as that had more development tools available. We used Valgrind and oprofile to help optimize the game's server, testing it under load. Some years later we would migrate back to FreeBSD for our server cluster, this time to 6.x and 7.x
February 9th, 2004
IMG relates Guild Software finding a new investor, reviving the company and moving on with the business of game development. This experience only strengthened our resolve, and we redoubled our efforts. Amazingly, we found a publisher within a few months, and things started to really fall into place.
January 13th, 2004
IMG covers our continuing financial difficulties, with some updates.
December 30th, 2003
Linux Gamers covers the impending demise of Guild Software, as we practically went out of business, our funding exhausted. This was a very painful time for us, but we learned a great deal.
April 21st, 2003
IMG covers the major 3.2 update of the public and free Vendetta Test, a major jump on the road to being a full-blown MMO.
December 2nd, 2002
IMG relates some of the new changes in the 3.1.5 release of the public Vendetta Test.
September 17th, 2002
IMG covers the 3.0 release of the public, multiplatform Vendetta Test.
August 29th, 2002
IMG relates some details of the upcoming 3.0 release of the public/free Vendetta Test. 3.0 was a major turning point in the MMO's development, where the game went from a trivial FPS-esque game (with powerups, and the like), to a persistent character-driven game with a dynamic economy.
April 22nd, 2002
Inside Mac Games announces the MacOS X release of the Vendetta Test (the public/free game engine testbed that preceeded Vendetta Online).
April 19th, 2002
Penny Arcade were the first to cover the multiplatform release of the free Vendetta Test. At least, they did for a few hours :). Although the PA newspost mishap on that day cut short some of our exposure, we have always been grateful to them for our first influx of users. Some of those players are still with us today.
October 29th, 2001
IMG covers a one of our developers posting to an early MacOS X developer mailing-list, during the initial port process of the game to the Mac. OS X was brand-new at this time, and we were an early adopter, with many of the issues inherent in developing for a relatively new platform (driver issues, documentation, etc). It was clearly a learning experience for us. Despite this being a somewhat embarassing post, it is humorous in retrospect, and is one of the earliest press mentions of our title. Andy posted a response in the comments, to try and clarify things at the time.
Earlier News
From 1998 through the end of 2001, the development of our game did not receive much press coverage, and none of it appears to be online anymore. During this period, we built our game engine with the expectation of demonstrating it to a publisher, who would then fund the expansion of the team and construction of the actual "game". Years of E3 meetings, however, did not live up to our hopes, and we eventually released the public/free "Vendetta Test" in 2002, both to prove and tune our engine with a live userbase, as well as hopefully gaining some exposure in the gaming press.