Lionhead Studios Ltd.

LionHead Studios was founded by Peter Molyneux, Mark Webley, Tim Rance and Steve Jackson in July 1997, coming from Bullfrog Productions. The company was headquartered in Surrey, England.

Around 2000, the company started offering companies to become a Lionhead satellite studio, to work on games under guidance of Lionhead as a main company:

• Big Blue Box Studios (eventually merged into Lionhead)
• Intrepid Computer Entertainment Ltd. (until October 2004)
• Black & White Studios (separate division, not really a satellite studio)

So far, the company has worked with three franchises: the strategical god games in the Black & White series, the Fable RPGs, and the creative film industry simulation The Movies.

On 6th April 2006, the company was acquired by Microsoft Game Studios. Since then, the Fable franchise has been continued with Fable II in October 2008.

In January 2012 CTO Tim Rance left the company to establish the game development studio 22Cans. In March of that year Peter Molyneux announced to follow him there. They work together with Peter Murphy, who also was with Lionhead until around 2008.

On 7 March 2016, Microsoft announced that development on Fable Legends was ceased and a proposed closure was confirmed. It was officially closed on 29 April 2016.