FromSoftware (フロム・ソフトウェア)
The studio that created an entire genre by refusing to explain anything to the player.
- Founded
- 1986
- Headquarters
- Tokyo, Japan
- Parent company
- Kadokawa Corporation
- Flagship product
- Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring
FromSoftware had been making mecha games since 1994 when Hidetaka Miyazaki took over a moribund project, Demon's Souls, in 2009 — winning the freedom to work undisturbed precisely because nobody believed in it. The result invented a grammar: frequent, instructive death, a story scattered through item descriptions, a world that folds back on itself, and no tutorial.
The word "souls-like" now names an entire genre. Elden Ring, written with George R. R. Martin and released in 2022, sold over thirty million copies and proved a demanding game could become a mainstream phenomenon. The studio has belonged to Kadokawa since 2014, with Sony and Tencent on the capital.
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