[1] Cyan was founded in 1987 by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, operating out of their parents' basement in their Spokane, Washington home.

The company's early titles, The Manhole (1988), Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel (1989) and Spelunx (1991) were whimsical fantasy adventures for a young audience.

After its release, Robyn opted to leave Cyan to pursue other interests, primarily working on independent film production.

Partly as a test of their new real-time 3D engine, Cyan released realMyst in 2000, a complete recreation of the original Myst game.

In 2003, Cyan announced that their multiplayer adventure, Uru, formerly known under the working titles DIRT ("D'ni In Real Time"), Mudpie ("Multi-User DIRT – Persistent Interactive Environment"), Parable and Myst Online, would be split into separate single-player and multiplayer components, at the request of the publisher Ubisoft.

In 2004, Cyan released two Uru expansion packs (To D'ni and The Path of the Shell) that included content originally intended for the online component.

After Myst V, the company laid off most of its employees due to financial difficulties,[7] but shortly after rehired almost everyone after negotiating a deal with Turner Broadcasting.

In response to this demand, Cyan Worlds released Untìl Uru in late 2004, a modified version of the client and server software of Live.

In August 2009, it was announced that Cyan Worlds would be working with Creative Kingdoms to create an online version of their MagiQuest virtual reality game.

This was the most successful incarnation of Uru, finally achieving the original goal of supported online play, with ongoing content releases.

On June 30, 2008, it was announced that Cyan Worlds had regained the rights to Uru, and had plans to relaunch it under the name Myst Online: Restoration Experiment.

Cyan no longer has funds available for further development on the game, and instead intends to release the code for the servers, client and tools as open-source software,[11] and rely on user-generated content for expansion.

[15] On October 17, 2013, Rand Miller announced a new video game designed as a spiritual successor to Myst and Riven called Obduction.

Obduction's world is fully rendered within the Unreal Engine and explorable from the first-person view, though uses full-motion video for some non-player characters.

[26][27] On April 9, 2018, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original Myst, Cyan announced via Kickstarter that they had acquired the legal rights to Exile and Revelation and were re-releasing the entire series, including the complete Uru and realMyst: Masterpiece Edition, on both DVD-ROM and digital download on GOG.com and Steam.

The Kickstarter campaign included a number of specific perks (such as a "working" Myst Linking Book with LED screen as the box for the physical copies of the games) for the anniversary editions, which would ship in November 2018.

[29] On September 16, 2020, Cyan announced Myst, a VR remake which they described as "the definitive version" of the original game, though it will also be available for standard displays.

[30][31][32] Most of Cyan's titles (those in the Myst and Uru series) tell the story of a humanoid race called the D'ni, who have the ability to write linking books.