March 11, 2005

Dear ShaderWorks Users,

I am pleased to announce that Activision, a leading international publisher of interactive games, with head-quarters in Santa Monica, CA, have recently acquired full rights to ShaderWorks as of March 20, 2005. I am also proud to have joined Activision's amazing team of game developers as Technical Director, Tools and will continue my work on a next generation ( in-house ) version of ShaderWorks for use in development of future Activision titles.

Please note: ShaderWorks XT Alpha 1.0 download will no longer be available as of today.

I want to thank everyone who followed the progress of ShaderWorks during its development and apologize to those who were awaiting a final release which I had promised more than once. I would have truly loved to have kept the project publicly available and in full development but the truth is, I was continuously unable to obtain any corporate backing from some of the major software / hardware companies in the industry. Yes, you know who you are :)

I am however very pleased that Activision took over the project. They were extremely upfront about their interest in ShaderWorks and negotiations were surprisingly "painless". On that note, I definitely recommend dealing and / or working with Activision if ever given the chance as in my personal experience, the people have been extremely friendly and so far, Activision has definitely been a great place to work...

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me directly at scott@mad-fx.com.

Regards,

Scott Bean
President / 3D Software Engineer
Mad Software Inc.