Visual Concepts was founded in May 1988 by programmer Scott Patterson and brothers Greg and Jeff Thomas, working out of a small office above a bank in Novato, California. In its first decade the studio built games for almost every machine and genre. Its early credits run from Gnarly Golf on the Apple IIGS and Great Western Shootout in 1989 to Trog on the NES, McDonaldland on the Game Boy and Desert Strike on the Super NES. Bill Walsh College Football and Madden NFL '94 followed in 1993 and pointed the team toward the genre that would define it, and a steady run of sports titles came through the mid-1990s. In September 1997 Sega announced it would acquire the studio, in a deal that closed on May 18, 1999. Working for Sega Sports on the Dreamcast, Visual Concepts launched the "2K" line in 1999 with NBA 2K, released that November with Allen Iverson on the cover, alongside NFL 2K and NHL 2K. Sega Sports went on to publish the first six NBA 2K games, and those years set the studio's reputation for sports sims with real depth on the court and the field.
The next turn came in January 2005, when Take-Two Interactive bought Visual Concepts from Sega for US$24 million and created the 2K Sports label the following day. NBA 2K6 was the first NBA 2K published under it. The NFL 2K series ended after the NFL signed an exclusive license with EA at the end of 2004, but the studio kept making NHL 2K and MLB 2K games, and since 2014 it has also developed the WWE 2K wrestling series with assistance from Yuke's. NBA 2K stayed at the center of it all, and each annual entry added something the series still builds on. NBA 2K10 introduced the MyPLAYER career mode, NBA 2K11 featured Michael Jordan, and NBA 2K13 introduced MyTEAM. NBA 2K14, the first next-generation entry, became the best-selling in the series at over 7 million copies. NBA 2K16 was the fastest seller at launch, with over four million units shipped in its first week and a MyCAREER story written and directed by Spike Lee. NBA 2K20 added all 12 WNBA teams, the NBA 2K League took the series into esports in 2018, and by December 2018 the franchise had passed 90 million units sold, making it the best-selling NBA video game series. That same month co-founder Greg Thomas, the studio's president, was honored with an Industry Icon award for 30 years with Visual Concepts, which by then employed more than 350 people. Today the studio works under 2K and Take-Two, with divisions including VC Novato, VC Austin, VC Irvine, VC Budapest, VC China, VC Korea and VC WWE, and NBA 2K27 is scheduled for September 4, 2026. On PC, NBA 2K16 and NBA 2K21 carry that lineage forward, built around the career and team-building modes the studio pioneered.
