Congrats, if there was one studio having earned this award it’s Splash Damage 
I wonder how independent video game developers nowadays really are though, a while ago I remember having a discussion in the SD IRC channel about how many companies were involved on a game like for example RTCW2. Sure, you can pick the engine you want to use, pick the partners to work on MP / SP (or make everything yourself), select which middle ware to use for services like networking, statistics, anti-cheat, etc, and while these companies don’t own a monopoly, aren’t you still a bit dependent on these companies during the process of producing a new game?
The Develop Industry Excellence Awards 2008 took place earlier in the week and we’re extremely pleased to announce that Splash Damage was named Best Independent Studio! The Develop Industry Excellence Awards are voted for by members of the UK development community and with Splash Damage originally coming from a modding background, winning this particular award is an especially exciting occasion for us. We’re still on the hunt for a picture of the awards ceremony - we’ll update this post as soon as we get ahold of one.
