Ion Storm, L.P. was an American video game developer founded by John Romero and Tom Hall, both formerly of id Software.

Ion Storm was founded by John Romero, Tom Hall, Todd Porter and Jerry O'Flaherty on November 15, 1996, with its headquarters in Dallas, Texas.

This included a ten-foot-wide company logo set into the terrazzo floor of the lobby and matching green elevator doors.

[4] The headquarters included a "crash room", a dormitory facility with two beds, three couches, a VCR, a wide-screen television, and two telephone booths.

[7] The sun shone through the office's glass rooftop directly into the monitors of the employees, forcing them to cover their cubicles with black fabric.

[9] John Romero's Daikatana was meant to be finished within seven months of the founding of Ion Storm and was to use the Quake engine.

[13] However, already behind schedule, the decision was made to port the entire game to the Quake II engine, six months into development.

Deus Ex, a first-person stealth shooter drawing from a melange of conspiracy theories, released to critical and commercial success in June 2000.

[15][16] The Austin office remained open to produce Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows until Spector's departure to "pursue personal interests outside the company" in 2004.

After finishing their 6 game contract, on February 9, 2005, Eidos announced that the Austin office would also close, meaning the end of Ion Storm as a company.

[8] Doom was just one of a series of blockbuster games Romero had designed, and Ion Storm was founded in no small part on his celebrity status within the industry.

This elevation of the game creators over the products themselves caused problems early on, evidenced in a 1997 advertisement which hyped the subsequently delayed Daikatana by boasting "John Romero's About To Make You His Bitch....Suck it down".

"[19] The critical and commercial failure of Daikatana was a major contributing factor in the closure of Ion Storm's Dallas office.