Darkworks S.A. Beefs Up R&D Capacity, Receives Award As One Of France's Fastest Growing Companies

PARIS, MAY 29TH 2006 - DARKWORKS S.A., a leading independent game development studio, announces today it is actively increasing its research & development capacity.

DARKWORKS is currently a leading partner in two upcoming important R&D project, in France and in Europe, "PLAYALL" and "EDUTAIN@GRID".

PLAYALL one of six R&D projects labelled by "Cap Digital Region Ile de France and the city of Paris International Competitiveness Pole" program set up by the French government. PLAY ALL is gathering the expertise and collaboration of twenty highly-skilled companies, industrial groups and universities, it aims to develop a range of robust next-generation toolchains for consoles, mobile terminals as well as HD set-top boxes..

EDUTAIN@GRID is a pan-European research project focusing on grid-computing technologies applied to online gaming and multimedia e-learning services. It is set up within the FrameWork 6 research program of the European Commission and brings together resources from European companies as well as academic research labs.

"Since it switched to next-generation DARKWORKS has been focusing on collaborative R&D to reach critical size faster. R&D is representing less and less of a video game production budget in percentage of the total these days, it is still critical to bring differentiating game features in our future titles" said Guillaume GOURAUD, managing director of DARKWORKS.

DARKWORKS has also been awarded a "GAZELLES 2005" trophy the ministry of SMEs for its rapid growth from 2003 to 2004. The GAZELLES trophy awards 2000 small and medium companies in all fields with a growth rate superior to 34% from 2003 to 2004. The trophy was awarded by Minister Renaud DUTREIL in presence of the Prime Minister Dominique DE VILLEPIN.

"DARKWORKS is proud to have been awarded and is anticipating a continuing growth rate for the coming years" said Antoine VILLETTE, President of DARKWORKS.

Based in Paris, France, DARKWORKS is a leading developer of next generation video games. Its past games include "Alone In The Dark The New Nightmare", published by ATARI, and "Cold Fear", published by Ubisoft. The company is currently working on a new original title for PC and next-generation platforms.

Darkworks S.A.
38, rue du Sentier
75002 Paris
France

www.darkworks.com

Contacts :
Antoine Villette a.villette@darkworks.com