An
Eidos-financed
game development company. Ion Storm has released three games so far, and at least one more is in the works. Ion Storm is based in
Dallas, but has a branch office in
Austin. Ion Storm Dallas was responsible for Dominion: Storm Over Gift 9 and
Daikatana, both of which were pretty much universally regarded as poor games. Ion Storm Austin was responsible for
Deus Ex, one of the better games of the year.
Ion has had a stormy history (yeah, OK, it was a bad
joke), involving massive employee walkouts, missed release dates, and financial problems. Some of this was the subject of a
Dallas Observer article a few years back.
Some of the employees who quit left to found
Third Law, some others went to
Looking Glass, and still more went to
id Software.
Ion got a lot of press early in their existence due to their massive influx of cash and the extravagent penthouse suite in a Dallas office building. The official motto of Ion Storm is "
Design is Law".
Ion Storm has been the butt of more than half the jokes in the gaming industry, but Deus Ex has started to alleviate some of that.