June 17th, 2010
Zeevex™ and Guild Software™ are partnering to make Vendetta Online™ subscription purchases available in more than 31,000 retail locations across the US, including Walgreens, 7-11, and more. See the press release for more information.
June 10th, 2010
Guild Software has announced an upcoming Android™ version of Vendetta Online! Read the full press release here. This news has also been picked up by The Inquirer, Massively, Slashdot (front page), and a very wide variety of other sites.
March 26th, 2010
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sits down with our CEO, John Bergman, to discuss a few high points of the recent Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco.
March 6th, 2010
The engine that powers Vendetta Online is now being announced as an upcoming MMO middleware product! The NAOS Engine brings a variety of online game development tools to the table, combined with a proven and highly scalable engine. The press release is also available.
January 31st, 2010
Today Blues News posted our announcement of the newly launched Station Conquest system. We hope to greatly expand this new gameplay mechanic over the coming months.
January 16th, 2010
Guild Software has launched a new company website design! Chances are, you're probably looking at it right now. We intend to add a lot more content to this corporate site over the coming months; this site update makes a refreshing change from our previous, 11-year-old site design.
December 19th, 2009
Added to our general Five Year Celebration, today we've launched our "Happy Holidays to Long Lost Vets" promotion: All unsubscribed accounts that were last subbed in September or earlier may play for free through January 1st!
November 3rd, 2009
Vendetta Online is now celebrating our five year anniversary! To help ring in this milestone, we'll be offering many special promotions, new merchandise, and several large-scale Dev-run game Events! Additionally, as a gift to our users, current subscribers receive access to a special Anniversary Edition Vulture. This celebration will run through the Holidays of 2009.
October 23rd, 2009
Apple has just posted our short HD trailer to their Apple Games site. According to them, we are officially the first HD game trailer on Apple.com!
July 24th, 2009
MMORPG has just posted a new article on Points of Interest in Vendetta Online. Take a look, and read about some of the interesting locations within the game.
July 22nd, 2009
Guild Software and MMOsite.com have teamed up to offer a special trial key giveaway. These promotional two-week trial keys may be used on any account that has not been previously subscribed, and are free on the MMOsite link above!
July 8th, 2009
MMORPG.com has posted another great feature article on VO, this time covering the recent expansion of dynamic warfare, as well as CTC and other game mechanics.
June 2nd, 2009
Gaming site MMORPG.com has posted a nice article about our recent expansions in multi-player ships, and other areas of gameplay.
May 6th, 2009
New Linux gaming site Linux Game Zoo has posted a developer interview with our project lead, John Bergman. Some of the questions go back many years, to the inception of our company and how we started in this industry.
April 8th, 2009
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has posted an interview with our CEO, John Bergman, mostly pertaining to a meeting of the Madison IGDA.
March 30th, 2009
Vendetta Online has been briefly reviewed in the April edition of the French print magazine "SvmMac". The review appears to be positive (our French skills are limited), and we appreciate them taking a look and mailing us a copy.
February 26th, 2009
A video has been posted of our CEO, John Bergman, giving an impromptu (unplanned) presentation of Vendetta Online at the meeting of the International Game Developer's Association, Madison Chapter.
February 10th, 2009
Guild Software, makers of Vendetta Online, have been voted a MMOSite.com 2008 Reader's Choice Award for "Favorite Game Company", beating out heavy hitters such as Blizzard Entertainment, NCsoft, Square-Enix and SOE. We are very grateful to our dedicated and loyal userbase who voted us to this position. We intend to continue being the communicative, responsive company you have come to know; taking the game to new levels, while remaining attentive to player feedback.
December 10th, 2008
Today Vendetta Online and MMORPG.com are partnering to offer free one-month trial keys to anyone who uses the free registration process on MMORPG.com. Up to 2500 keys will be distributed, and may be applied to any account that has not been previously subscribed. See the promo page on MMORPG.com for more information.
December 1st, 2008
Vendetta Online appears in this month's print edition of Linux Format Magazine. We have not yet seen the review (they are sending us a copy), but we're told it's both lengthy and positive.
November 9th, 2008
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has written a very nice little profile of Guild Software, appearing in the Cue section of today's print paper, as well as online (only minor discrepancy, we launched in 2004, not 2007). Thanks Stan!
October 25th, 2008
An online amateur-game-developer convention has posted a lengthy interview with Guild Software's lead developer, John Bergman.
October 19th, 2008
Slashdot posts about the release of Vendetta Online™'s new Player Contribution Corps. See the original press release here.
July 1st, 2008
TeamSpeak Systems GmbH and Guild Software, Inc announce their partnership, bringing integrated voice chat to all client platforms of Vendetta Online™! This makes VO the very first product to publicly demonstrate the new TeamSpeak 3 SDK!
February 14th, 2008
Chinese gaming site 17173.com apparently mentions VO. We hope they liked it, since we're not sure what they said.
December 2nd, 2007
MMO site Massively.com has posted a first look at Vendetta Online™.
July 3rd, 2007
MacApper has posted a positive mini-review of Vendetta Online.
May 21st, 2007
MMO site QuickJump has posted a brief update on the state of Vendetta Online.
June 21st, 2006
BlogCritics has posted a five-star review of Vendetta Online, comparing it to Wing Commander Privateer!
May 31st, 2006
QuickJump has posted a list of changes to the game over the past year.
February 8th, 2006
Guild Software's CEO, John Bergman has been interviewed for Wisconsin Technology Network!
August 26th, 2005
IMG posts a beginners guide to Vendetta Online.
August 25th, 2005
Inside Mac Games has posted a nice review of the game!
May 24th, 2005
Craig Coppola reviews Vendetta Online™ for Game Industry News.
February 23rd, 2005
Gamespot posts a positive review of VO.
February 14th, 2005
ESCmag posts a new review of VO.
January 19th, 2005
MacWorld Magazine has given VO four stars! Thanks, Peter Cohen!
January 12th, 2005
IGN has posted a tough, but fair look at VO. (UPDATE: The game has changed considerably since this review).
December 15th, 2004
GameZone has posted a new review of Vendetta Online™.
December 3rd, 2004
Inside Mac Games interviews Guild Software's lead developer, John Bergman.
November 4th, 2004
MMO gaming site MMHell posts a brief developer profile of all four members of the Guild Software team.
November 4th, 2004
GameSpy covers the games shipped on this date, including VO!
November 1st, 2004
Vendetta Online™ has officially launched! See the official site for details.
October 28th, 2004
IGN's RPG Vault posts Part 2 of the team Q&A.
October 26th, 2004
Inside Mac Games posts a new preview of Vendetta Online.
October 21st, 2004
Apple has posted a lengthy article about Vendetta Online™ to the Apple Games site!
October 15th, 2004
IGN RPG Vault posts a First View of Vendetta Online™.
July 23rd, 2004
IGN's RPG Vault has posted Part 1 of an interview with Guild Software's lead developer.
June 4th, 2004
GameSpy covers Guild Software partnering with Strategy First for retail publishing of Vendetta Online in North America.
May 28th, 2004
IMG covers some of our news announcements regarding the ongoing development of Vendetta Online.
May 11th, 2004
GameSpy picks up our E3 preview announcement.
These earlier links are mostly provided to show historical milestones and struggles on our journey, for general interest. Prior to this point, most articles are related to the free/public "Vendetta Test" alpha version of VO, while most after this relate to the final "Vendetta Online" product that shipped in November of 2004. Additionally, the bulk of these earlier articles are from Inside Mac Games, as GameSpy and most other sites of the era no longer have anything online from this time period.
May 10th, 2004
Inside Mac Games reveals a major website update for the Vendetta Test.
May 5th, 2004
Inside Mac Games covers some patch updates to the public/free Vendetta Test.
February 25th, 2004
IMG covers some server changes with the Vendetta Test. At this point we migrated from FreeBSD 4.x to Linux on our server, as that had more development tools available. We used Valgrind and oprofile to help optimize the game's server, testing it under load. Some years later we would migrate back to FreeBSD for our server cluster, this time to 6.x and 7.x
February 9th, 2004
IMG relates Guild Software finding a new investor, reviving the company and moving on with the business of game development. This experience only strengthened our resolve, and we redoubled our efforts. Amazingly, we found a publisher within a few months, and things started to really fall into place.
January 13th, 2004
IMG covers our continuing financial difficulties, with some updates.
December 30th, 2003
Linux Gamers covers the impending demise of Guild Software, as we practically went out of business, our funding exhausted. This was a very painful time for us, but we learned a great deal.
April 21st, 2003
IMG covers the major 3.2 update of the public and free Vendetta Test, a major jump on the road to being a full-blown MMO.
December 2nd, 2002
IMG relates some of the new changes in the 3.1.5 release of the public Vendetta Test.
September 17th, 2002
IMG covers the 3.0 release of the public, multiplatform Vendetta Test.
August 29th, 2002
IMG relates some details of the upcoming 3.0 release of the public/free Vendetta Test. 3.0 was a major turning point in the MMO's development, where the game went from a trivial FPS-esque game (with powerups, and the like), to a persistent character-driven game with a dynamic economy.
April 22nd, 2002
Inside Mac Games announces the MacOS X release of the Vendetta Test (the public/free game engine testbed that preceeded Vendetta Online).
April 19th, 2002
Penny Arcade were the first to cover the multiplatform release of the free Vendetta Test. At least, they did for a few hours :). Although the PA newspost mishap on that day cut short some of our exposure, we have always been grateful to them for our first influx of users. Some of those players are still with us today.
October 29th, 2001
IMG covers a one of our developers posting to an early MacOS X developer mailing-list, during the initial port process of the game to the Mac. OS X was brand-new at this time, and we were an early adopter, with many of the issues inherent in developing for a relatively new platform (driver issues, documentation, etc). It was clearly a learning experience for us. Despite this being a somewhat embarassing post, it is humorous in retrospect, and is one of the earliest press mentions of our title. Andy posted a response in the comments, to try and clarify things at the time.
Earlier News
From 1998 through the end of 2001, the development of our game did not receive much press coverage, and none of it appears to be online anymore. During this period, we built our game engine with the expectation of demonstrating it to a publisher, who would then fund the expansion of the team and construction of the actual "game". Years of E3 meetings, however, did not live up to our hopes, and we eventually released the public/free "Vendetta Test" in 2002, both to prove and tune our engine with a live userbase, as well as hopefully gaining some exposure in the gaming press.
Zeevex™ and Guild Software™ are partnering to make Vendetta Online™ subscription purchases available in more than 31,000 retail locations across the US, including Walgreens, 7-11, and more. See the press release for more information.
June 10th, 2010
Guild Software has announced an upcoming Android™ version of Vendetta Online! Read the full press release here. This news has also been picked up by The Inquirer, Massively, Slashdot (front page), and a very wide variety of other sites.
March 26th, 2010
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sits down with our CEO, John Bergman, to discuss a few high points of the recent Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco.
March 6th, 2010
The engine that powers Vendetta Online is now being announced as an upcoming MMO middleware product! The NAOS Engine brings a variety of online game development tools to the table, combined with a proven and highly scalable engine. The press release is also available.
January 31st, 2010
Today Blues News posted our announcement of the newly launched Station Conquest system. We hope to greatly expand this new gameplay mechanic over the coming months.
January 16th, 2010
Guild Software has launched a new company website design! Chances are, you're probably looking at it right now. We intend to add a lot more content to this corporate site over the coming months; this site update makes a refreshing change from our previous, 11-year-old site design.
December 19th, 2009
Added to our general Five Year Celebration, today we've launched our "Happy Holidays to Long Lost Vets" promotion: All unsubscribed accounts that were last subbed in September or earlier may play for free through January 1st!
November 3rd, 2009
Vendetta Online is now celebrating our five year anniversary! To help ring in this milestone, we'll be offering many special promotions, new merchandise, and several large-scale Dev-run game Events! Additionally, as a gift to our users, current subscribers receive access to a special Anniversary Edition Vulture. This celebration will run through the Holidays of 2009.
October 23rd, 2009
Apple has just posted our short HD trailer to their Apple Games site. According to them, we are officially the first HD game trailer on Apple.com!
July 24th, 2009
MMORPG has just posted a new article on Points of Interest in Vendetta Online. Take a look, and read about some of the interesting locations within the game.
July 22nd, 2009
Guild Software and MMOsite.com have teamed up to offer a special trial key giveaway. These promotional two-week trial keys may be used on any account that has not been previously subscribed, and are free on the MMOsite link above!
July 8th, 2009
MMORPG.com has posted another great feature article on VO, this time covering the recent expansion of dynamic warfare, as well as CTC and other game mechanics.
June 2nd, 2009
Gaming site MMORPG.com has posted a nice article about our recent expansions in multi-player ships, and other areas of gameplay.
May 6th, 2009
New Linux gaming site Linux Game Zoo has posted a developer interview with our project lead, John Bergman. Some of the questions go back many years, to the inception of our company and how we started in this industry.
April 8th, 2009
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has posted an interview with our CEO, John Bergman, mostly pertaining to a meeting of the Madison IGDA.
March 30th, 2009
Vendetta Online has been briefly reviewed in the April edition of the French print magazine "SvmMac". The review appears to be positive (our French skills are limited), and we appreciate them taking a look and mailing us a copy.
February 26th, 2009
A video has been posted of our CEO, John Bergman, giving an impromptu (unplanned) presentation of Vendetta Online at the meeting of the International Game Developer's Association, Madison Chapter.
February 10th, 2009
Guild Software, makers of Vendetta Online, have been voted a MMOSite.com 2008 Reader's Choice Award for "Favorite Game Company", beating out heavy hitters such as Blizzard Entertainment, NCsoft, Square-Enix and SOE. We are very grateful to our dedicated and loyal userbase who voted us to this position. We intend to continue being the communicative, responsive company you have come to know; taking the game to new levels, while remaining attentive to player feedback.
December 10th, 2008
Today Vendetta Online and MMORPG.com are partnering to offer free one-month trial keys to anyone who uses the free registration process on MMORPG.com. Up to 2500 keys will be distributed, and may be applied to any account that has not been previously subscribed. See the promo page on MMORPG.com for more information.
December 1st, 2008
Vendetta Online appears in this month's print edition of Linux Format Magazine. We have not yet seen the review (they are sending us a copy), but we're told it's both lengthy and positive.
November 9th, 2008
Stan Miller from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has written a very nice little profile of Guild Software, appearing in the Cue section of today's print paper, as well as online (only minor discrepancy, we launched in 2004, not 2007). Thanks Stan!
October 25th, 2008
An online amateur-game-developer convention has posted a lengthy interview with Guild Software's lead developer, John Bergman.
October 19th, 2008
Slashdot posts about the release of Vendetta Online™'s new Player Contribution Corps. See the original press release here.
July 1st, 2008
TeamSpeak Systems GmbH and Guild Software, Inc announce their partnership, bringing integrated voice chat to all client platforms of Vendetta Online™! This makes VO the very first product to publicly demonstrate the new TeamSpeak 3 SDK!
February 14th, 2008
Chinese gaming site 17173.com apparently mentions VO. We hope they liked it, since we're not sure what they said.
December 2nd, 2007
MMO site Massively.com has posted a first look at Vendetta Online™.
July 3rd, 2007
MacApper has posted a positive mini-review of Vendetta Online.
May 21st, 2007
MMO site QuickJump has posted a brief update on the state of Vendetta Online.
June 21st, 2006
BlogCritics has posted a five-star review of Vendetta Online, comparing it to Wing Commander Privateer!
May 31st, 2006
QuickJump has posted a list of changes to the game over the past year.
February 8th, 2006
Guild Software's CEO, John Bergman has been interviewed for Wisconsin Technology Network!
August 26th, 2005
IMG posts a beginners guide to Vendetta Online.
August 25th, 2005
Inside Mac Games has posted a nice review of the game!
May 24th, 2005
Craig Coppola reviews Vendetta Online™ for Game Industry News.
February 23rd, 2005
Gamespot posts a positive review of VO.
February 14th, 2005
ESCmag posts a new review of VO.
January 19th, 2005
MacWorld Magazine has given VO four stars! Thanks, Peter Cohen!
January 12th, 2005
IGN has posted a tough, but fair look at VO. (UPDATE: The game has changed considerably since this review).
December 15th, 2004
GameZone has posted a new review of Vendetta Online™.
December 3rd, 2004
Inside Mac Games interviews Guild Software's lead developer, John Bergman.
November 4th, 2004
MMO gaming site MMHell posts a brief developer profile of all four members of the Guild Software team.
November 4th, 2004
GameSpy covers the games shipped on this date, including VO!
November 1st, 2004
Vendetta Online™ has officially launched! See the official site for details.
October 28th, 2004
IGN's RPG Vault posts Part 2 of the team Q&A.
October 26th, 2004
Inside Mac Games posts a new preview of Vendetta Online.
October 21st, 2004
Apple has posted a lengthy article about Vendetta Online™ to the Apple Games site!
October 15th, 2004
IGN RPG Vault posts a First View of Vendetta Online™.
July 23rd, 2004
IGN's RPG Vault has posted Part 1 of an interview with Guild Software's lead developer.
June 4th, 2004
GameSpy covers Guild Software partnering with Strategy First for retail publishing of Vendetta Online in North America.
May 28th, 2004
IMG covers some of our news announcements regarding the ongoing development of Vendetta Online.
May 11th, 2004
GameSpy picks up our E3 preview announcement.
These earlier links are mostly provided to show historical milestones and struggles on our journey, for general interest. Prior to this point, most articles are related to the free/public "Vendetta Test" alpha version of VO, while most after this relate to the final "Vendetta Online" product that shipped in November of 2004. Additionally, the bulk of these earlier articles are from Inside Mac Games, as GameSpy and most other sites of the era no longer have anything online from this time period.
May 10th, 2004
Inside Mac Games reveals a major website update for the Vendetta Test.
May 5th, 2004
Inside Mac Games covers some patch updates to the public/free Vendetta Test.
February 25th, 2004
IMG covers some server changes with the Vendetta Test. At this point we migrated from FreeBSD 4.x to Linux on our server, as that had more development tools available. We used Valgrind and oprofile to help optimize the game's server, testing it under load. Some years later we would migrate back to FreeBSD for our server cluster, this time to 6.x and 7.x
February 9th, 2004
IMG relates Guild Software finding a new investor, reviving the company and moving on with the business of game development. This experience only strengthened our resolve, and we redoubled our efforts. Amazingly, we found a publisher within a few months, and things started to really fall into place.
January 13th, 2004
IMG covers our continuing financial difficulties, with some updates.
December 30th, 2003
Linux Gamers covers the impending demise of Guild Software, as we practically went out of business, our funding exhausted. This was a very painful time for us, but we learned a great deal.
April 21st, 2003
IMG covers the major 3.2 update of the public and free Vendetta Test, a major jump on the road to being a full-blown MMO.
December 2nd, 2002
IMG relates some of the new changes in the 3.1.5 release of the public Vendetta Test.
September 17th, 2002
IMG covers the 3.0 release of the public, multiplatform Vendetta Test.
August 29th, 2002
IMG relates some details of the upcoming 3.0 release of the public/free Vendetta Test. 3.0 was a major turning point in the MMO's development, where the game went from a trivial FPS-esque game (with powerups, and the like), to a persistent character-driven game with a dynamic economy.
April 22nd, 2002
Inside Mac Games announces the MacOS X release of the Vendetta Test (the public/free game engine testbed that preceeded Vendetta Online).
April 19th, 2002
Penny Arcade were the first to cover the multiplatform release of the free Vendetta Test. At least, they did for a few hours :). Although the PA newspost mishap on that day cut short some of our exposure, we have always been grateful to them for our first influx of users. Some of those players are still with us today.
October 29th, 2001
IMG covers a one of our developers posting to an early MacOS X developer mailing-list, during the initial port process of the game to the Mac. OS X was brand-new at this time, and we were an early adopter, with many of the issues inherent in developing for a relatively new platform (driver issues, documentation, etc). It was clearly a learning experience for us. Despite this being a somewhat embarassing post, it is humorous in retrospect, and is one of the earliest press mentions of our title. Andy posted a response in the comments, to try and clarify things at the time.
Earlier News
From 1998 through the end of 2001, the development of our game did not receive much press coverage, and none of it appears to be online anymore. During this period, we built our game engine with the expectation of demonstrating it to a publisher, who would then fund the expansion of the team and construction of the actual "game". Years of E3 meetings, however, did not live up to our hopes, and we eventually released the public/free "Vendetta Test" in 2002, both to prove and tune our engine with a live userbase, as well as hopefully gaining some exposure in the gaming press.