Panic Button (company)

Panic Button is a video game developer based in Austin, Texas. Founded in 2007, the studio is best known for their ports of AAA video games from other platforms to the Nintendo Switch console, which is markedly less powerful than other consoles of the same generation. Panic Button also does contract work on other platforms, including 4K updates for PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.

History
Panic Button was founded in Austin, Texas in late 2007 by a group of software tool developers who wanted to get back into working with games. Two of Panic Button's founders, Craig Galley and D. Michael Traub, are still active with the company. As of 2018, Adam Creighton serves as the company's Studio General Manager and Director of Development.

Panic Button started experimenting with motion-based games, and for the next few years, they developed several exclusive games for the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360's Kinect. However, interpreting the user's intend in motion games proved difficult and unreliable for them.

In 2012, Panic Button collaborated with the fellow Austin company Twisted Pixel Games to make their first port for a game named Ms. Splosion Man. Porting games became the main source of revenue of the company for the next few years, although they also released their own properties such as  Astro Duel Deluxe in 2017.

The company's Nintendo Switch port of Rocket League made Panic Button better known in the industry. Their Switch ports of Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus followed with similar positive responses and turned Panic Button into a studio in demand. The company had started working with the Switch hardware around 2012 (including early development tech), earlier than any other studio, and they work closely with Nintendo and Nvidia. Panic Button sees the source of its success in collaborating closely with the original content makers to ensure faithful ports within the constraints of the hardware, while adding non-gimmicky elements that improve the port, such as including touch or motion controls for the Switch.

To keep a diverse portfolio, Panic Button partnered with Sony to bring the VR title To the Top from Oculus and HTC Vive to PlayStation VR in 2018; more VR ports may come when the opportunity arises. The studio also intends to keep building their own internal properties, saying "We don't plan to reinvent the genres for the games we're making, but we want to create some very tight, well-crafted love letters to these particular genres that we think will be fun and enjoyable and replayable for folks."