Bethesda’s parent company ZeniMax acquires Doom co-developer Escalation Studios

ZeniMax is bringing in a little more game-development firepower to its already considerable roster.

The parent company of Fallout and Skyrim publisher Bethesda announced today that it has acquired developer Escalation Studios, which has primarily worked as a co-developer offering support on other companies’ projects. Most recently, Escalation worked with id Software on 2016’s excellent hell-on-Mars shooter Doom. With this new team in place, ZeniMax’s internal game-making squads can now turn to Escalation for help in completing and polishing their releases.

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“We have continually been impressed with the team at Escalation that Tom and Marc have assembled,” Bethesda development vice president Todd Vaughn said in a statement. “Their commitment to quality and innovation has made significant contributions to the projects we’ve worked on together, and we’re excited to have them join ZeniMax.”

Game-industry vets Marc Tardif and Tom Mustaine founded Escalation in Dallas in 2007. In addition to Doom, it has developed the virtual reality game Please Don’t Touch Anything, which is an puzzler that requires you to escape a room inside a nuclear sub-station without blowing up the nearby city. Now, under the ZeniMax banner, Escalation will continue both supporting other teams and working on VR projects.

“ZeniMax Media’s studios are responsible for some of the most iconic games in our industry,” cofounder Tardif said in a statement. “Becoming a part of this amazing family of developers is an honor for everyone at our studio.”

Mustaine echoed Tardif’s comment.

“We are proud of the incredible team that has helped make Escalation such a success,” Mustaine added. “We can’t wait to see what the studio is capable of with the support of such a great company as ZeniMax.”