ZeniMax Media
media company by Microsoft
ZeniMax Media Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded in 1999 by Christopher Weaver and Robert A. Altman as the parent company for Weaver's video game publisher Bethesda Softworks. The company additionally owns the development studios Bethesda Game Studios (The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield), id Software (Doom, Quake, and Rage), Arkane Studios (Dishonored, Prey, and Redfall), MachineGames (Wolfenstein), Obsidian Entertainment (Grounded, Fallout: New Vegas) and ZeniMax Online Studios (The Elder Scrolls Online). Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media for $8.1 billion in March 2021 and operates it under the Xbox division.
History
Formation, investments, and growth (1999–2007)
Christopher Weaver, the founder of the video game publisher Bethesda Softworks, and Robert A. Altman, a lawyer, founded ZeniMax Media in 1999. The name is a portmanteau of "zenith" and "maximum". The company was established to succeed Media Technology Limited as the parent company of Bethesda Softworks. Weaver brought Altman onboard as the chief executive officer, contributing his stock in Bethesda Softworks so that ZeniMax Media would be able to obtain funding. Weaver served as the chief technology officer from 1999 to 2002, when he moved into a non-executive role.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q189557. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2021, 2007 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “ZeniMax Media” 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.