 | |
| WildTangent | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | 1998; 27 years ago (1998) |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | , US |
Key people | Jens Knauber (CEO) |
| Products | SeeList of WildTangent games |
| Parent | Gamigo [de](2019–present) |
| Website | company |
Gamigo Inc.,doing business asWildTangent, is an Americanvideo game developer based inRound Rock, Texas. In April 2019, it was acquired by the German games companyGamigo [de].[1]
Approximately 30 of the games in the WildTangent catalog were produced by the company's own WildTangent Game Studios. The rest of the games on the WildTangent game network are from other game developers and publishers. This includes games like Mall World which the company has represented to integrate major brands likeLevi's.[2]
Users have complained that the company's products have an adverse effect on their PC's performance or are intrusive to the user's experience.[citation needed]PC Magazine wrote in 2004 that although the WildTangent WebDriver was "not very" evil, some privacy complaints were justified as the program's user manual states that it may collect name, address, phone number, e-mail, and other contact information and could distribute the collected information with the user's consent. Concerns were also raised about the software's self-updating feature.[3] In 2003,antispyware programSpybot classified WildTangent's original WebDriver as apotentially unwanted program.[4][5]
In 2011, WildTangent challenged apatent infringement ruling againstHulu and itself byUltramercial, LLC, which contended that the two companies had violated its 2001 patentUS 7346545 , "Method and system for payment ofintellectual property royalties by interposed sponsor on behalf of consumer over a telecommunications network", alleging that the patent was too abstract. TheCourt of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld Ultramercial's patent, stating that it "does not simply claim the age-old idea that advertising can serve as currency. Instead [it] discloses a practical application of this idea." The court also asserted that the technical elements required to implement the system described were intricate enough to not be abstract. On June 21, 2013, after being ordered by theSupreme Court to re-examine the case, the Federal Circuit upheld its decision and ruled that Ultramercial's patents were valid.[6][7][8] However, the 2014Supreme Court ruling inAlice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l narrowed patent eligibility for software, and the Supreme Court subsequently sent Ultramercial's case back to the Federal Circuit. In November 2014, the Federal Circuit invalidated Ultramercial's patent in light of the ruling inAlice, undoing two of its own previous rulings and freeing WildTangent from liability.[9]
WildTangent owns the Genesis3Dgame engine created by Eclipse Entertainment in 1997.[10] The engine was announced on July 4, 1998.[11] The firstbeta version was released on July 30, followed byrelease candidate 1 on March 2, 1999.[12][13] The engine wasfree and open-source software under the "Eclipse" license, requiring companies to pay$10,000 to makeclosed source changes. In 1999, WildTangent acquired the assets for Genesis3D from Eclipse Entertainment to use for their web driver. While working on improving the engine'ssource code, Mark O'Hara and his team decided to instead create a new engine, Destiny3D, from the obtained knowledge.[10] WildTangent then acquired Eclipse Entertainment in January 2002.[14] Notable games developed using Genesis3D include thefirst-person shooter gamesCatechumen (2000) and its successorOminous Horizons: A Paladin's Calling (2001),[15]Ethnic Cleansing (2002),[16] andSpecial Force (2003),[17] as well as theaction-adventure gameDragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair (2002).[18]
