Midway Games

Midway Games Inc. (formerly Midway Manufacturing and Bally Midway, and commonly known simply as Midway) was an American video game company that existed from 1958 to 2010. Midway's franchises included Mortal Kombat, Rampage, Spy Hunter, NBA Jam, Cruis'n and NFL Blitz. Midway also acquired the rights to video games that were originally developed by WMS Industries and Atari Games, such as Defender, Joust, Robotron: 2084, Gauntlet and the Rush series.

The company was founded as Midway Manufacturing in 1958, as an amusement game manufacturer.^[4] The company was then purchased by Bally Manufacturing in 1969. In 1973, Midway moved into the interactive entertainment industry, developing and publishing arcade video games. The company scored its first mainstream hit with the U.S. distribution of Taito's Space Invaders in 1978, which it followed up by licensing Namco games such as Galaxian (1979), Pac-Man (1980), and Galaga (1981). Bally then consolidated its pinball division with Midway in 1982, which was renamed Bally Midway. In 1988, Bally Manufacturing sold its amusement games operations to WMS Industries, the former Williams Electronics, which used the plain Midway name for video games while using the Bally and Williams names for pinball.

In 1994, WMS purchased Tradewest to bring publishing of home video game market in-house, with the latter becoming Midway Home Entertainment in 1996, the same year that Midway made its initial public offering of stock. In 1998, WMS spun off its remaining shares of Midway. Midway was ranked the fourth largest-selling video game publisher in 2000.^[5] However it experienced large annual net losses and engaged in a series of stock and debt offerings and other financings and borrowings. Midway exited the arcade industry in 2001. Sumner Redstone, the head of Viacom and CBS Corporation, increased his stake in Midway from about 15% in 1998 to about 87% by the end of 2007.^[6] In December 2008, Redstone sold all his stock and $70 million of Midway debt to Mark Thomas, a private investor, for $100,000.^[7]

In February 2009, Midway Games filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.^[8] Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment acquired most of Midway's assets, and Midway settled with Mark Thomas to relinquish his Midway stock and debt.^[9][10] The U.S. District Court in Chicago dismissed a lawsuit alleging that former officers of Midway misled shareholders while selling their own stock.^[11] In 2010, the bankruptcy court dismissed claims against Redstone concerning his sale of the company to Thomas and approved Midway's plan of liquidation.^[12] Midway terminated the public registration of its securities on June 9, 2010.^[13]