[7][8] After two years of development on Cavedog's first product, Total Annihilation, it was presented at the 1997 E3 in Atlanta, and published on September 30, 1997.

Total Annihilation's creator, Chris Taylor, left the company shortly before the release of the Core Contingency expansion pack to found his own development house, Gas Powered Games.

Cavedog released one more expansion pack, Battle Tactics, as well as many freely downloadable enhancements and patches, and built strong community support with their own online service, Boneyards (now shut down), that matched opponents and provided a continuing game campaign.

The closure of Cavedog came as the game industry began to experience a downturn in sales, to which parent company GT Interactive was affected.

GT Interactive was purchased by Infogrames and the Cavedog label was discarded by Humongous Entertainment in 2000, which renewed its focus on children's games.