Firaxis Games

Firaxis Games is an American developer based in Sparks, Maryland. It was founded on 1 May 1996 by Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds, three designers who had worked at MicroProse, the company Meier set up in 1982 with Bill Stealey. The name blends 'fiery' and 'axis' and comes from a piece of music by Briggs. They chose to stay in the Baltimore area and to work as a design house, leaving manufacturing and distribution to others; for publishing they signed with Electronic Arts, under its Origin Systems label.

Its first game was Sid Meier's Gettysburg! (1997), which earned near-perfect reviews. That year the company was renamed Firaxis Games and EA took a minority stake. From then on, games designed by Meier carried his name in the title, as they had at MicroProse. For his body of work, including Gettysburg! and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Meier became the second person inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame, after Shigeru Miyamoto. Reynolds left in February 2000. The studio also made Sid Meier's SimGolf, with Will Wright, and Civilization III.

In November 2004 it released Sid Meier's Pirates!, a new take on Meier's 1987 game. That month Infogrames sold the Civilization rights, and in January 2005 the buyer was revealed as Take-Two Interactive, whose new 2K label kept Firaxis in charge of the series. Civilization IV came out in October 2005, and on 7 November Take-Two bought the studio, which became part of 2K. Briggs left in 2006 and was succeeded by Steve Martin. Later releases included Civilization V, Civilization: Beyond Earth, the XCOM series and Midnight Suns.

In 2009 it moved to its Sparks headquarters, which it expanded in 2015. It held Firaxicon, a convention devoted to its games, in 2014 and 2015, and in 2016 it announced CivilizationEDU, an educational version of Civilization V made with GlassLab. In February 2023 Midnight Suns creative director Jake Solomon and Steve Martin both left, with Heather Hazen taking over from Martin. There were layoffs in May 2023 and September 2025. Its most recent game is Sid Meier's Civilization VII, released on 11 February 2025.