One of the most controversial and visionary studios of recent years has finally closed its doors. Ion Storm's last remaining outpost in Austin, Texas, was abandoned yesterday, according to a press release from its parent company Eidos. In a rather impersonal statement - no doubt written by someone whose gaming experience peaked with a bout of Solitaire while waiting for a personal appraisal back in 2001? has washed its hands of the troubled yet often brilliant team.

"Eidos today announced locally that it is to consolidate down its North American internal development capabilities from two studios to one," read the statement. "This will mean the immediate of the Ion Storm studio in Austin, Texas, which has been focused primarily on the development of PC and games. ... This is part of [Eidos'] move to consolidate and strengthen its technical and management capabilities into a smaller number of studios which are capable of scaling up in order to meet the competitive challenges that lie ahead, particularly in anticipation of next-generation technologies and platforms."

While Ion Storm became infamous for its incredibly lavish spending at their Dallas headquarters and will forever be entwined with the debacle that was Daikatana, the tortured company was responsible for some cracking games. Created by two id luminaries, Tod Hall and John Romero, the company formed in Dallas back in 1996. It was soon to find itself embroiled in one of the most notorious game development circuses of all time. When the target of all this vitriol was finally released in 2000, Daikatana received an unprecedented critical mauling and consequently sunk without a trace at retail. The Dallas office of Ion Storm was soon to close down.

Focus then moved to their Austin outpost, which overcame the stigma attached to the Ion Storm name through the more restrained PR attitudes of its employees along with growing anticipation from gamers over the quality of its first release. went on to become one of the most successful games of the year as well as snapping up just about every single gaming gong in the pantheon of gaming awards. So, on the one hand 2000 saw the release of one of the most vilified games of all time, while on the other we had the arrival of one of the most celebrated and influential titles of the modern age.

Ion Storm's schizophrenia was to be its eventual undoing. It was unsure what kind of games to develop and suffered from a decision to remain with technology that was quickly becoming obsolete. Anachronox was a very promising which was enjoyed by nearly all who played it and was lauded for its attempt to inject some Eastern stylings into the computer RPG. But its reliance on antiquated Unreal-tech was enough to discourage most gamers, especially as the PC gaming world was going through an incredible fixation with all the new possibilities offered by the 2nd and 3rd generations of GPUs.

Ion Storm went on to pump out sequels to both Deus Ex and Thief, the latter being IP from Looking Glass studios, a sadly defunct company from whom Ion Storm accumulated many of its staff. Neither Deus Ex: Invisible War nor Thief: Deadly Shadows were runaway successes, and as 2004 drew to a close the departure of many of the big names at Ion Storm seemed to indicate that the company's days were numbered.

It has taken another few months for those concerns to become fact. Ion Storm is no more and what was an ambitious attempt by some of the most respected old-timers of the PC gaming scene to craft the successful company of their dreams has been struck out of existence by the accountant's pen. The question on the minds of many is whether troubled parent company Eidos will also soon suffer the same fate.

By Sam Gibson