Sex Pistols Interactive

Sex Pistols Interactive is a British video game company founded by Sex Pistols members Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, along with Damned singer Dave Vanian and Germs singer Darby Crash in 1999, in order to release the massively controversial game Polio's Cancer Fun.

Prior to the release, the Sex Pistols Interactive name was used to refer to the four during a lawsuit filed by Nintendo during development of the game as it used the Super Mario Bros engine and most of the material remained completely unchanged, therefore creating an illegal derivative work.

Although it has the Sex Pistols name, only two of the group are in the company. The other two, Steve Jones and Paul Cook, went on to work for Activision, and later Neversoft before it's 2014 shutdown.

Early years (1998-2001)
Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious began development of a new game they stated could change the face of gaming forever in 1998, and decided to hack the original 1985 Super Mario Bros. game for the NES.

After enlisting Dave and Darby on board, the development lasted six months, and having enough material, the group demonstrated the game at the Westminster Ameteur Games Expo in December 1998, only to be kicked out for it's highly controversial themes, including Luigi becoming a gay Mexican man named Lupus, after the disease the character has."We showed "Polio" at this game expo in Westminster, and the peoples' faces were priceless. It was the funniest shit ever."

- Darby Crash, 2012

The development was completely finished by May 1999 and the group released the game on June 15, 1999. In order to receive the revenue easier, they formed a company named Sex Pistols Interactive; a name they used in court when Nintendo sued them for creating an illegal derivative work (in which the four won).

Following the release, the four decided to keep the name and immediately began working on a 3D version for the Nintendo 64; the game sold 50,000 copies on launch day, following the massive publicity from the court case and game expo incident.

The N64 version took surprisingly quick to develop, as it used the Super Mario 64 engine. It was released as Polio's Cancer Fun 64 on October 16, 1999, and on it's first day, sold 100,000 copies. By that point, despite the original PCF being pulled from stores three days after release, black market sales (from them themselves) and praise from fellow punk rockers made the company's revenue skyrocket, never seeming to decline.

In fact, in little under a month, the four ported the 64 version to the PlayStation using a Net Yaroze and released it on November 12, 1999. Versions for the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Sega Saturn, and Game Boy were also developed, although not released until the 2010s when a retro gaming throwback boom arose.

The game actually got attention in gaming magazines, although most reviews were negative. Jane Asher, a seventeen year old recently hired writer for Gamespot, called it the best game ever. She was fired a few days following the magazine's release."I definitely think it's the best game ever! It's so brutally honest and straightforward that it's hilarious. Mario is now a guy with polio and cancer, named Polio, and Luigi is now a gay Mexican man who also has cancer. I don't think anything could match this game, even in 20 years to come."

- Jane Asher, GameSpot, 1999

GamePro stated, "The Sex Pistols are doing the same to video games as they did to music; turning it into a disgusting mess that beats anything else disgusting.".

Next Generation however stated: "Polio's Cancer Fun might be very very horrible to some people but the gameplay is actually pretty neat and anyone who has played the original Super Mario Bros. would be able to play this game straight up. The dark humor Sex Pistols Interactive present is actually very effective, as you've seen in the big stink being kicked up about it. These newbies are making an impact on the industry as we speak."

On January 1, 2000, Rotten revealed in a press statement that the company had generated $10 million in revenue, a first for a company active for half a year. Rotten also announced that "our games will plague every console that comes out in the future".

In fact, upon hearing of the announcement of the PS2, Vicious stole the prototype used in the unveiling and reverse engineered it, creating an emulator and various tools necessary for developing games for the system, using the emulator for testing.

The emulator was called SPS2 (Sex PistolStation 2), a name he had brainstormed quickly, giving it it's strange name. The group later released this emulator on the internet following the console's release."We were at Japan, and Sony just happened to be unveiling the PS2, so I snagged the working prototype and took it apart, studied the hardware, and wrote up an emulator in C. Every game we've tried with it so far works."

- Sid Vicious, 2000 The group were already developing a sequel for Polio before the console was even released.

SPI bought excess amounts of the console during launch day in order to bundle them with Polio's Cancer Fun 2, and resold them in the black market. Due to the high demand for the console, their tactics paid off and by December 2000, the group was worth $38 million.

The group also followed the Xbox and the Gamecube, also stealing advance copies (Vicious traveled to Japan just to steal an advance copy of the Gamecube) and reverse engineering them. The group ported the Polio sequel to both systems and used the same selling tactics as for the PS2, and the group was worth $100 million by December 2001.

Growing success of the Polio series (2002-2008)
By 2002, the Polio series was generating $10 million a month; the games were allowed back into retail stores, surprisingly without any legal trouble. Nintendo felt threatened by the determination of SPI and stepped back from suing them.

Sony, in a very rare stint, actually offered to bundle the PS2 with Polio 2 following the legal trouble. In an even rarer stint, SPI agreed, but said they wouldn't participate in anything else.

Following this, Vicious released a statement which told bigger companies not to purchase SPI, saying, "We would like to remain as an independent business. We don't want to lose control to the stupid, deceitful corporations. This is our fucking company, we built it out of nothing. We fucked over Nintendo, a gaming giant, just to get to this point."

Jane Asher, the girl who was fired from Gamespot for giving PCF a positive review, was offered by Rotten to join as a finance analyst, which she accepted, and was offered a massive salary, in gratitude for giving their game a positive review.

In 2004,SPI developed Polio's Life Support Party, a parody of Mario Party, in which the player can play several mini-games involving the hospital in which Polio is stationed in, dying of terminal cancer. The games included were stuff like "Pin the ECG on the Donkey", the donkey being an elderly woman having cardiac arrest.

In 2005, SPI made a parody of the Tony Hawk series of skateboarding games, with "Timmy Eagle's British Shitfest", a parody of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. Activision threatened to sue but too backed out after feeling threatened by the company's growing dominance.

2006 and 2007 were a transitional year for the company, as revenue skyrocketed to $1 billion and they were quickly becoming one of the biggest known names in the history of gaming.

During 2006, the company changed their logo to resemble the cover of their debut album "Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols". Rotten said this was to make sure their half-punk band half-video game company shtick stayed.

In 2008, the Polio franchise' revenue crossed over $80 million. In ten years, the company became a powerhouse in the gaming industry.

Recent years (2010-present)
In 2010, Rotten announced that the company was already speculating about eighth generation consoles, despite the seventh being at it's peak.

Vicious again reverse engineered the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in early 2013, and games were already releasing for it when the console launched.

By 2014, the company crossed over $2 billion in revenue.

To celebrate their fifteenth anniversary, the group re released the original 1998 Polio's Cancer Fun on their "15 Years Of Anarchy In Video Games" set for the XB1 and PS4.

In 2017, the group announced it was already anticipating the ninth generation of consoles; Vicious reverse engineered the Nintendo Switch and released Polio on it already, and stated in an interview with Giant Bomb that he too thought the ninth generation would most likely be the last."We've gotten to a point where you can't differentiate the graphics quality of game consoles nowadays, both the Xbox One and PS4 look the fucking same and the Switch is pretty much the same. I'd say PCs are the future, because what's the fucking point of fighting over consoles that run exactly alike? This ain't 1999 anymore where you could tell a difference."

- Sid Vicious, Giant Bomb, 2017 In July 2017, Johnny announced a new division of the company, named after his second band, Public Image Games. This division was created to help aspiring non-mainstream game developers to get their games published in the underground scene, and the revenue is given to the developer upon release, even for royalties decades after the game is released."Public Image Games is a subdivision of the company that we specifically founded to give developers a chance to shine, no bullshit or fucking about, they will shine and that's all there is to it. Even if the game is utter shit, it will be released, and every single cent of that revenue goes into their pocket."

- Johnny Rotten, 2017