Idol Minds was founded by programmer Mark Lyons and artist Scott Atkins on April 1, 1997, in Boulder, Colorado. Both had previously been employed by Sony Interactive Studios America in San Diego, and to establish Idol Minds Lyons and his family moved from California to Colorado. Originally located in Boulder, the company later moved to Louisville in 2003, and to Westminster in 2015. Idol Minds became widely known for their ragdoll physics-based game Pain, which was first released on November 29, 2007. The game went on to become the "all time top downloaded game" on PlayStation Network of 2008. On October 21, 2009, it was reported that Idol Minds, in a series of layoffs, had made 26 of its 46 employees redundant. An employee of the company cited budget cuts from Pain publisher Sony Computer Entertainment as primary reason for the staff reduction. On June 7, 2011, at that year's E3, Sony Computer Entertainment announced Ruin, a "Diablo-style action role-playing game" for PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3, to be in development at Idol Minds, in co-operation with SCE San Diego Studio. Later retitled Warrior's Lair on January 13, 2012, Idol Minds was taken off the project on April 2 that year. Warrior's Lair was eventually canceled in July 2013. In 2012, Idol Minds shifted its focus onto mobile free-to-play games. On August 10, 2015, a Kickstarter project was launched for a nature photography game titled "Shutterbug", seeking to raise in funding. The project was canceled 10 days later, after had already been raised, with Idol Minds stating that "things didn't work out". On May 31, 2017, Idol Minds announced that the studio had changed its direction of development to focus on narrative-driven games, having developed a toolset called "StoryForge", and effectively adopted the trading name "Deck Nine". The company stated that a "brand new addition to a critically acclaimed franchise" was already in development. The day after, on June 1, 2017, multiple images from a supposed prequel to the 2015 graphic adventure gameLife Is Strange leaked through Deck Nine's website. The leak surprised journalists, as a sequel to Life Is Strange, Life Is Strange 2 had been announced to be in development at Dontnod Entertainment, the creators of the franchise, the month before. On June 11, 2017, at Microsoft's E3 2017press conference, Life Is Strange publisher Square Enix announced the game in development at Deck Nine to be . The first out of three episodes from Before the Storm was released on August 31, 2017. On September 20, 2018, Deck Nine announced to be working on a new game with Square Enix.
