Deck13 Interactive traces its roots to Artex Software, a small team building games for RISC OS that shipped Ankh: The Tales of Mystery in 1997, but the studio as players know it took shape in July 2001, when Jan Klose and Florian Stadlbauer founded TriggerLab GmbH in Frankfurt, Germany. After the release of Stealth Combat, the company was renamed Deck13 on April 2, 2002, borrowing its name from DM-Deck16, one of the maps in the original Unreal Tournament. Its first decade belonged to the point-and-click adventure: the Ankh series (2005-2007) revived the Egyptian comedy of the RISC OS original for a new audience, Jack Keane (2007) and its 2012 sequel followed in the same humorous vein, and Venetica (2009) marked an early step into action RPG territory with its Renaissance-styled Venice. The decisive turn came on October 28, 2014 with Lords of the Fallen, co-developed with publisher CI Games and directed by Jan Klose, a heavy, deliberate action RPG built on the studio's in-house Fledge engine that established Deck13 as a European team working credibly in the Souls-like mold.
That direction defined the studio's next decade. The Surge (2017) moved the formula into a near-future industrial complex, replacing swords and armor with exoskeleton rigs and a limb-targeting combat system in which the parts you cut from enemies become the gear you wear, and The Surge 2 (2019) expanded the idea into a larger, more open city. Leadership changed along the way: Florian Stadlbauer departed in September 2016 and Mathias Reichert took over as managing director, with Lars Janssen now serving as CEO and Reichert as COO. In June 2020 Focus Home Interactive acquired Deck13 for EUR 7.1 million, making it a subsidiary of the publisher now known as Focus Entertainment, and the studio has since grown beyond its Frankfurt am Main headquarters with a subsidiary in Hamburg and a development studio opened in Montreal in February 2021. Atlas Fallen (2023) carried its combat sensibilities into a sand-swept open world with shape-shifting gauntlet weapons. With more than 20 years of experience, Deck13 describes itself as one of Germany's leading developers, and for players its catalog offers something distinctive: demanding, methodical action RPGs with a European character, with Lords of the Fallen the natural place to start.
