Guerrilla B.V., also known as Guerrilla Games, is a Dutch video game company located in Amsterdam. It is part of PlayStation Studios. The company was originally created in January 2000 as Lost Boys Games through the joining of three smaller studios. It was owned by a large multimedia company called Lost Boys. In 2001, Lost Boys Games became an independent company. In 2003, it was bought by Media Republic, which changed the name to Guerrilla Games. In 2005, Sony Computer Entertainment purchased Guerrilla Games. As of 2025, the company has 385 employees led by three joint studio directors: Jan-Bart van Beek, Joel Eschler, and Hella Schmidt. The company is most famous for creating the Killzone and Horizon video game series.
History
Guerrilla was formed when three Dutch video game companies merged: Orange Games, Digital Infinity, and Formula Game Development. Orange Games was created in 1993 by Arjan Brussee, who helped design the 1994 game Jazz Jackrabbit. Digital Infinity was founded in 1995 by Arnout van der Kamp. Formula Game Development was started in 1998 by Martin de Ronde and sold to Lost Boys, a multimedia company owned by Michiel Mol, in 1999. The three companies merged to form Lost Boys Games, a subsidiary of Lost Boys, on January 1, 2000. De Ronde was the managing director, and the company had 25 employees, growing to 40 by November 2000. Hermen Hulst was hired from a consulting firm to take over as managing director the next year. In 2001, when Lost Boys merged with a Swedish media company called IconMediaLab, Lost Boys Games became an independent company but remained owned by Mol.
Lost Boys Games first made games for the Game Boy Color with original characters. However, publishers preferred games with licensed characters. Because the company did not want to change its original characters, it could not find a publisher. As a result, the company worked on projects paid for by others, creating four handheld games: Dizzy's Candy Quest (Game Boy Color, 2001), Rhino Rumble (Game Boy Color, 2002), Black Belt Challenge (Game Boy Advance, 2002), and Invader (Game Boy Advance, 2002). The last two games were published by Xicat Interactive. In 2003, Mol created a new media company, Media Republic, which bought 75% of Lost Boys Games. Shortly after, in July 2003, the company was renamed Guerrilla to match the style of its new parent company.
Guerrilla began working on two games: Killzone for Sony Computer Entertainment’s PlayStation 2 and Shellshock: Nam '67 for Eidos Interactive’s PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Microsoft Windows. Both games were released in 2002 and received mixed reviews. Killzone had high expectations before its release and sold over a million copies worldwide, earning "Greatest Hits" status in North America and "Platinum" status in Europe. In March 2004, Guerrilla signed an exclusive deal with Sony to make games only for Sony’s consoles: PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and PlayStation 3.
By late 2005, companies like Eidos Interactive wanted to buy Guerrilla, but Sony Computer Entertainment purchased the entire company in December 2005. Guerrilla later released Killzone: Liberation for the PlayStation Portable in 2006, Killzone 2 for the PlayStation 3 in 2009, and Killzone 3 for the PlayStation 3 in 2011.
In February 2012, co-founder Arjan Brussee left Guerrilla to join Visceral Games. By June 2018, Guerrilla had 250 employees in Amsterdam and planned to move to a new building in 2019, aiming to grow to 400 employees. In November 2019, Hermen Hulst became head of Worldwide Studios, and Angie Smets, Jan-Bart van Beek, and Michiel van der Leeuw became joint studio heads.
At the 2015 E3 conference, Guerrilla introduced Horizon Zero Dawn, described as a "post-apocalyptic open world action role-playing game" about Aloy, a young huntress exploring a world filled with machines. The game was released for PlayStation 4 in 2017 and received praise from critics. An expansion, The Frozen Wilds, was released in 2017. By February 2018, over 7.6 million copies had been sold, rising to over 10 million by 2019, making it one of the best-selling PlayStation 4 games. In March 2020, Hulst confirmed a PC version of Horizon Zero Dawn, which was released on August 7, 2020.
The next game, Horizon Forbidden West, was announced in June 2020 and released on February 18, 2022. In August 2020, Guerrilla moved to its new studio space. On January 4, 2022, Guerrilla and Firesprite announced a new Horizon game for PlayStation VR2 called Horizon Call of the Mountain. In December 2022, Sony announced an expansion for Horizon Forbidden West titled Burning Shores, set for release on April 19, 2023.
In April 2023, Guerrilla announced changes to its management. Angie Smets left to become Head of Development Strategy at PlayStation Studios, and Michiel van der Leeuw shifted focus to the Decima engine. Joel Eschler and Hella Schmidt joined Jan-Bart van Beek as new studio directors.
Technology
Guerrilla Games uses a special game engine called Decima. This engine is also used by other game companies, such as Kojima Productions, for their Death Stranding series. In April 2023, Guerrilla Games announced that the studio's technical director, Michiel van der Leeuw, would focus on improving the engine's development.