īrøderbund's The Print Shop software produced signs and greeting cards. Although intending to keep it running as a business, they were unable to make money from Synapse's products, and closed it down after a year. That year it took over the assets of the well-regarded but financially troubled Synapse Software. By early 1984 InfoWorld estimated that Brøderbund was tied with Human Engineered Software as the world's tenth-largest microcomputer-software company and largest entertainment-software company, with $13 million in 1983 sales. In 1983, the Carlstons publicly discussed their plans to emphasize home utility software ( Bank Street Writer and other 'Bank Street' applications), computer literacy with The Jim Henson Company, and edutainment. īy 1982, Brøderbund produced arcade games which, the company told Jerry Pournelle, sold much better than strategy games. To emphasize its family origin while avoiding a connection with the ethnonationalist Afrikaner organization of the same name, the Carlstons altered the spelling when naming their company 'Brøderbund'. Galactic Empire had many names taken from African languages a group of merchants was named Broederbond, Afrikaans for 'association of brothers'. Their sister Cathy joined the company a year later from Lord & Taylor. Before founding the company, Doug was a lawyer and Gary had held several jobs, including teaching Swedish at an American college. īrøderbund was founded by brothers Doug and Gary Carlston in 1980 for the purpose of marketing Galactic Empire, a strategy computer game that Doug Carlston had created in 1979.

The company would often release school editions of their games, which contained extra features to allow teachers to use the software to facilitate students' learning.

Brøderbund is now the brand name for Riverdeep's graphic design, productivity, and edutainment titles such as The Print Shop, Carmen Sandiego, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, the Living Books series, and Reader Rabbit titles, in addition to publishing software for other companies, notably Zone Labs' ZoneAlarm. Games released by the revived Broderbund are distributed by Encore, Inc. Many of Broderbund's software titles, such as The Print Shop, PrintMaster, and Mavis Beacon, are still published under the name 'Brøderbund'. Brøderbund was purchased by The Learning Company (formerly SoftKey) in 1998.

The company was founded in Eugene, Oregon, and moved to San Rafael, California, then later to Novato, California. Broderbund is best known for the 8-bit video game hits Choplifter, Lode Runner, Karateka, and Prince of Persia (all of which originated on the Apple II), as well as The Print Shop-originally for printing signs and banners on dot matrix printers-and the Myst and Carmen Sandiego games. (stylized as Brøderbund) was an American maker of video games, educational software, and productivity tools.

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