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Institution
1.
2. • The company was founded as Future Publishing in Somerton, Somerset in 1985 by Chris Anderson
with the sole magazine Amstrad Action. An early innovation was the inclusion of free software on
magazine covers, the first company to do so.
• Anderson sold Future to Pearson PLC for £52.7m in 1994, but bought it back in 1998, with Future
chief executive Greg Ingham and Apax Venture Partners, for £142m. In 2001, Anderson left
Future.
• In 2007 the State of Texas filed a lawsuit against Future plc for violating the Children's Online
Privacy Protection Act. The lawsuit alleges that the Future plc owned website GamesRadar "failed
to include necessary disclosures and obtain parental consent before collecting personal
information from children." The owner of the other websites settled in March 2008, though the
final disposition against Future PLC is not public record.
• In November 2009, Future reported a fall in profits from £9.5 million to £3.7 million (a loss of 61
percent) in the fiscal year that ended 30 September 2009. Future attributed this to problems with
their US market, hit by a fall in the general advertising market.
• In March 2010, Future announced that it was exploring the possibility of reviving its Games
Master brand on television. The video games show had run from 1992 until 1998; the spin-off
magazine continues to be published.
3.
4.
5. • This company was a UK based magazine publisher, which published a number of
video games, computing, creative and lifestyle magazines. It was founded on 14
May 2005 with private funds by Damian Butt, Steven Boyd and Mark Kendrick, all
were former directors of Paragon Publishing, and launched with a core set of six
gaming and creative computing titles. It was taken over by Future plc on 21
October 2016.
• In October 2005, it had acquired the only retro games magazine Retro Gamer,
after its original publisher, Live Publishing went bankrupt. Early in 2006, it further
acquired the rights to publish a considerable number of titles including gamesTM,
Play, PowerStation, X360, Digital Photographer and iCreate, from the old Paragon
Publishing stable of magazines when owner Highbury House Communications
went into liquidation, following Future Publishing's withdrawal of its offer to buy
the company, due to threats of a monopoly-investigation by the United Kingdom
Competition Commission.
