Cliff Bleszinski
American video game designer
Cliff Bleszinski (; born February 12, 1975), popularly known as CliffyB, is an American video game designer, known for his work on the Unreal and Gears of War series while at Epic Games. After leaving Epic in 2012, he co-founded Boss Key Productions in 2014 which closed in 2018 after the commercial failure of the multiplayer shooter LawBreakers. Since Boss Key's closure, Bleszinski has spent his time with theater and writing.
Career
Bleszinski's first game was The Palace of Deceit, an adventure title he started at the age of 15. Programmed in Visual Basic, its second version came out when he was 16.
Epic Games (1992–2012)
Bleszinski got his start at Epic Games in 1992, after submitting his game Dare to Dream to the company's CEO, Tim Sweeney. Though Dare to Dream did not achieve a great success, it led Bleszinski to work on Jazz Jackrabbit, a platformer co-developed by demoscene coder Arjan Brussee. The title, which came out in 1994, became Epic's biggest selling game at the time, earning him enough money to buy his first apartment and car. It was also around this time that he joined Sweeney and James Schmalz on what would become Unreal, which received a follow-up, Unreal Tournament, and expanded into a series of games.
In addition to his work on the Unreal series, Bleszinski served as creative consultant on Rune, and as lead designer on the first three installments of the Gears of War franchise, which has sold over 22 million copies and earned over one billion in revenue as of January 2014.
“Cliff Bleszinski” enters the record as american video game designer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cliff, Bleszinski and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2340255. VIAF identifies the subject as 2355166959205247160000. The Library of Congress control number is no2022141069. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975, 2012, 2014 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cliff Bleszinski” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.