Founded by Tameem Antoniades, Nina Kristensen and Mike Ball in March 2000, the company operated under the name Just Add Monsters.

Sony Computer Entertainment saved the team from bankruptcy by funding the development of Heavenly Sword, which was an expensive project.

The game's poor sales resulted in Ninja Theory losing all their in-house technologies because of contractual agreements with Sony.

The team began diversifying its portfolio of games and taking on contract work for publishers after finishing the development of DmC.

The team developed a business model they called "Independent AAA", where the game would have a small budget while retaining high graphical fidelity.

[2] With Argonaut's support and funding, the team was able to move into a proper office, hire 17 more staff and buy the technologies needed to make a video game.

The development team assembled a gameplay demo of Kung Fu Chaos and presented it to Microsoft Games Studios.

While the team expected the publishing relationship with Microsoft would continue, they declined to fund the sequel since the first game was not warmly welcomed by its audience.

Recognizing that Kung Fu Story would not fare well with the audience, the team decided to greatly expand the game's scope to satisfy players' demands.

Publishers were interested in funding the game, but they were reluctant to do so due to Argonaut's financial troubles, of which the team at Just Add Monsters was unaware.

[5] The team also invested a lot in performance capture, working with Weta Digital and Andy Serkis, who became the title's "dramatic director".

Not wanting to dissolve the entire team to work on the sequel, Ninja Theory decided to leave Heavenly Sword and all the technologies built for it to Sony and seek external funding from another publisher for their next project.

Because Heavenly Sword had been unprofitable, Ninja Theory needed to present the new game to publishers as fast as possible since they did not have much reserve cash.

[13] Immediately after the completion of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, publisher Capcom chose Ninja Theory to develop the next entry in the Devil May Cry series, as it was impressed by the company's past work, especially on Heavenly Sword.

[17] Antoniades responded to fan displeasure over the redesign by saying that "The essence of Devil May Cry is all about 'cool'" and that the design from the PS2 era "isn't cool anymore.

[2] Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and DmC: Devil May Cry collectively sold approximately 4.5 million units.

[2] With the introduction of the eighth generation of video game consoles, Ninja Theory predicted there would be a rise in development costs, and publishers would become even more conservative when funding projects.

[22] In September 2016, Ninja Theory announced their Senua Studio division, which would work on real-time virtual character technology.

[26] As the game explored mental illness and psychosis, the company consulted professional neuroscientists and obtained financial backing from the Wellcome Trust.

As for the future, Antoniades shared: "We've got other projects on the go, led by different team members who have their own personal slant on what they want to do, and they're not serious subjects, they are much more fun, traditional games if you like.

[32] In October 2019, Ninja Theory announced the establishment of a research and development effort dealing with mental health, dubbed The Insight Project.

The Insight Project builds upon and continues the co-operation between Ninja Theory and Paul Fletcher, a University of Cambridge psychiatrist and professor of health neuroscience who had consulted the studio on Hellblade.

With The Insight Project, Ninja Theory plans to build smaller games to "help people identify and control negative emotions".

Antoniades said that Project: Mara "will be a real-world and grounded representation of true mental terror" and "will be based heavily on research, interviews, and firsthand accounts to recreate the horrors of the mind as accurately and believably as possible.

"[35] In April 2024, Polygon reported that co-founder and chief creative director Tameem Antoniades left Ninja Theory.

[36] He subsequently confirmed his departure on social media, expressing his desire to leave the company after the first Hellblade, but decided to stay for two more years to help with the transition.

[37] Ninja Theory's initial goal was to create a blockbuster title for major publishers, so they could gain a place in the triple-A gaming scene.

[38] However, the team slowly realised that the publisher model was restraining developers' creative vision, making the games more conservative and risk-averse.