NetDevil

''This page is about the game developer NetDevil. You may be looking for the NetDevil Angler Fish, the company logo.'' NetDevil, owned by Gazillion Entertainment, was an American developer of massively multiplayer online role-playing games in Louisville, Colorado.

Beginnings
NetDevil was founded in 1997 by Scott Brown, Peter Grundy and Steven Williams in Louisville, a suburb north of Denver, Colorado. Before forming NetDevil, Brown, Grundy, and Williams worked at Digital Creators, an information technology firm located in Boulder, Colorado. The three dreamed of being creators of their own digital worlds, and began developing Jumpgate, a space-based flight simulator MMO, during their spare evenings and weekends.

After a year of part-time work, they quit their jobs and started NetDevil, headquartered in the basement of Scott Brown's home. Their first proper office was 750 square feet (70 m2), sub-leased from friends with another technology company. In an interview with GameDaily, Scott Brown shared that at one point they had fourteen people packed into one big room.

According to the company's website, the name NetDevil was chosen as a name because of the "owners' obsession with cool scary things that live in the deep dark waters of the world". All of the company's principals are certified SCUBA divers, including one certified dive master.

New location
In June 2007, NetDevil announced that they'd completed moving into their new location in Louisville, Colorado, a nearly 30,000 sq ft (2,800 m2) office facility which includes a professional sound studio, user testing facility and LEGO model shop. To celebrate their 10th year anniversary, they hosted a party at their new location.

Acquisition by Gazillion Entertainment
In July 2008, NetDevil was purchased by game publisher Gazillion Entertainment, though this fact was not made public until March 2009.

Departures of Founders
In the last months of 2010, all remaining founders of NetDevil, notably Scott Brown, Peter Grundy, and Ryan Seabury, who headed the LEGO Universe team, chose to leave the company. Brown and Seabury started End Games Entertainment whose first product is a Facebook game titled Vorp!

Layoffs
In February 2011, two rounds of layoffs took place at the NetDevil studio. The first round eliminated the Jumpgate Evolution development team. The second downsized the LEGO Universe team and appears to be part of a deal in which Gazillion passed control of development of LEGO Universe to the LEGO Group. As of the last week of February, it is not clear whether NetDevil will be retained as a studio by Gazillion Entertainment.

Fate
It is largely believed that NetDevil was defunct because of LEGO Universe, having transferred too many staff to LEGO and lost too much money in development and redesign. It is said the Gazillion, NetDevil, and LEGO all had three different visions on where LEGO Universe was to go, leading to NetDevil's fate, and come January, LEGO Universe's.