Gearbox Publishing

Gearbox Publishing at a Glance

Gearbox Publishing operates as a significant force in the game industry despite being officially established in 2016 by Gearbox Software. Their catalog on PlayPile contains 31 titles, all of which are published rather than developed in-house. The company has maintained steady activity from 2015 through 2025, with their output growing noticeably in the last five years. They released only ten games during the 2010s but have brought twenty titles to market since 2020. This expansion includes a diverse range of genres where Adventure leads with 21 games followed by Shooters with 12 releases. They also handle Indie, Role-playing, Strategy, Puzzle, Simulator, Platform, Real Time Strategy, and Arcade titles. Their platform reach is heavily weighted toward personal computers. Twenty-nine of their published games appear on PC, while they have a presence on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch. Smaller numbers of releases exist for Android, iOS, Mac, and Oculus Rift systems. The overall quality of their publishing portfolio shows strong consistency. They have an average IGDB rating of 76 out of 100 across seventeen rated titles. The breakdown reveals six games that scored great at 80 or above and eleven good titles ranging from 60 to 79. There are no mixed or poor ratings in their current data set. Their highest-rated releases include Homeworld: Remastered Collection from 2015 with a score of 90.4, Risk of Rain 2 from 2020 at 85.4, and Subnautica from 2018 scoring 83.7. Other notable high performers are UFO: Unidentified Falling Objects and Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour. Recent releases show a slight dip in average scores compared to their peak titles. Homeworld 3 received a 73.5 rating in May 2024, while RKGK scored 77.5 earlier that same year. Gigantic: Rampage Edition landed at 75.3 in April 2024 and Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds appeared in late 2023. The company underwent structural changes when Embracer Group acquired Gearbox Entertainment in 2021. They later integrated Perfect World Entertainment in 2022, renaming it Gearbox Publishing San Francisco to align with the main label.

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