Syndicate is a 2012 cyberpunk first-person shooter video game developed by Starbreeze Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It is a reboot of the Syndicate series of real-time tactical shooter games developed by Bullfrog Productions. The game was released in February 2012 worldwide. Set in the year 2069, the narrative revolves around Miles Kilo, a EuroCorp agent who must eliminate important personnel from rival corporations; in the process, he discovers the evil, secret practice used by EuroCorp to recruit agents. The game features a large variety of weapons; from standard pistols to the futuristic guns. Kilo is implanted with a computer chip that allows him to access the dataverse and can use hacking to defeat enemies and solve environmental puzzles.
Pre-production of the game began in 2007. Electronic Arts approached Starbreeze Studios to revive the franchise because it was impressed with the quality of Starbreeze Studios' previous games and believed they could add "style" to the series. The game was returned to the drawing board after a year of development, and the co-operative multiplayer mode was added to the main game. The development team hoped the game would appeal to both newcomers and players of the original game; they maintained the theme of the original and drastically changed the gameplay. Richard K. Morgan was hired to write the story for the game.
Announced in September 2011, the game was released in February 2012 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game received generally positive reviews from critics upon release. Critics praised the gameplay, style, graphics, art direction, artificial intelligence and the co-operative mode, but the game's story was criticized. The game's budget was smaller than the typical AAA video game, and was considered as a commercial failure for the publisher. The game's excessive violence led to the game being banned in Australia
