Obsidian Entertainment

Obsidian Entertainment is an American studio based in Irvine, California. It was founded on 12 June 2003 by Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan and Chris Jones, who came from Black Isle Studios, the Interplay subsidiary where they had worked on games such as Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment and Fallout 2. They left in frustration after Interplay lost its Dungeons & Dragons licence and cancelled Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound. The company started with seven people, the five founders included.

Its first contracts were sequels to BioWare games. LucasArts asked it to make Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (2004), which was rushed out with content cut, and Atari commissioned Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006). Its first original game, Alpha Protocol (2010), was a commercial failure for Sega. That same year Bethesda trusted it with Fallout: New Vegas, its first AAA game, followed by Dungeon Siege III (2011), the first game on its Onyx engine, and South Park: The Stick of Truth (2014).

Cancelled projects such as Aliens: Crucible and Stormlands pushed the studio into a severe crisis in 2012. It was rescued by a Kickstarter campaign for Pillars of Eternity, an isometric role-playing game in the spirit of Baldur's Gate, which beat the funding record set by Double Fine Adventure and came out in 2015. From then on it focused on its own ideas, with Tyranny (2016) and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (2018). Microsoft bought it in November 2018, and as part of Xbox Game Studios it released The Outer Worlds (2019), Grounded and Pentiment (2022).

Avowed came out in February 2025 and The Outer Worlds 2 that October. In July 2026 Bethesda Game Studios confirmed it was working with Obsidian on an upcoming Fallout game, and in September Microsoft moved the studio, together with the rights to its games, to Bethesda Softworks within ZeniMax Media, where it remains a distinct studio. Grounded 2 is scheduled for release in 2027.