Sixteen Tons Entertainment
- Open roles
- 2
- Founded
- 1993
- Employees
- 11-50
- Offices
- 2
About Sixteen Tons Entertainment
Sixteen Tons Entertainment is a German game developer and publisher founded in 1993 by Ralph Stock. The studio is best known for the EMERGENCY franchise, a long-running series of real-time strategy and crisis-management games in which players coordinate police, fire, rescue and technical units during emergency scenarios.
The company’s early catalogue includes satirical business simulations and adventure titles such as Mad News and Caribbean Disaster. In 1998 it released Emergency: Fighters for Life, establishing a foundation for the emergency-services strategy games that followed. The series has since expanded across PC, console and mobile releases, including Emergency 2, Emergency 3, Emergency 4, Emergency 5, Emergency Operator and the 2023 Steam release of Emergency.
Development focus
Its work spans consumer games and interactive simulations, with capabilities including:
- Real-time strategy, emergency simulation and systems design
- Free-to-play mobile game development and live operations
- Game economy design and cross-platform engineering for PC, mobile and Nintendo Switch
- 2D and 3D art, visual direction, technical animation, quality assurance and player support
- Serious games and gamified simulations for research, institutional, healthcare and public-safety contexts
In 2018, the studio launched EMERGENCY HQ for iOS and Android, extending the franchise into free-to-play mobile gaming. The title remains under active live-service development alongside new mobile projects.
Sixteen Tons Entertainment has also developed educational and serious-game projects, including titles in the Willi wills wissen series, Menschen auf der Flucht and Blue Brain Club. Its serious-games work has included educational, disaster-prevention and healthcare simulation software produced with European research consortiums and universities.
Phoenix Games acquired the company in January 2020. In March 2026, the business formally aligned its legal name with its public identity, changing from Promotion Software GmbH to Sixteen Tons Entertainment GmbH while retaining the same commercial-register record.
More about Sixteen Tons Entertainment
Leadership and company history
- Jan Richter is Chief Executive Officer (Geschäftsführer), having succeeded founder Ralph Stock in August 2024; the corporate registration was updated in January 2026.
- Klaas Kersting is Managing Director, and Sebastian Nußbaum joined as Chief Creative Officer in 2026.
- The company previously operated a serious-games division, Serious Games Solutions GmbH, which was fully merged into the parent entity in 2013/2016. Its historical Potsdam subsidiary, Quadriga Games GmbH, merged in December 2010.
- In August 2026, the company spun off Beyond Bytes GmbH as a separate commercial entity.
Notable credits
17 creditsOffices
Where Sixteen Tons Entertainment is based
- Karlstraße 3, D-72072 Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, GermanyTübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Tübingen office
HeadquartersOpened 1993
Original studio founded in 1993, housing core development, administration, and legal registration.
- Kurfürstendamm 234, D-10719 Berlin, GermanyBerlin, Germany
Berlin office
Opened 2009
About this office
Branch studio established in Babelsberg/Potsdam in 2009 and operating in Berlin since 2017 as a hybrid development hub for mobile engineering, art, live-ops, and production.
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