Domark Software

Domark Software was a British video game publisher that emerged in the mid-1980s and became one of the quiet but important pillars of the UK games industry. Founded in 1984 by Dominic Wheatley and Mark Strachan, Domark was never a company driven by flashy branding or strong internal development studios. Instead, its strength lay in publishing, licensing, and spotting commercial opportunities at the right moment. The company name itself reflected this pragmatic origin, being simply a fusion of the founders’ first names.

In its early years, Domark built a reputation by publishing games for home computers such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and later the Amiga and Atari ST.
As the 1980s progressed, Domark increasingly focused on licensed properties. It found considerable success adapting well-known board games and popular brands into video games, most notably Trivial Pursuit, which sold extremely well and became one of the company’s most reliable sources of income. Domark also handled conversions of arcade and film licenses, including Star Wars, helping to bring recognizable names to home systems at a time when brand recognition could make or break a release.

Perhaps Domark’s most historically significant contribution came in the early 1990s with the publication of Championship Manager. Initially a modest project, it went on to define the football management genre and became a cultural phenomenon in the UK and Europe.

By the mid-1990s, rising development costs and the shift toward console-focused publishing put pressure on many mid-sized companies, Domark included. In 1995, Domark merged with other UK developers and publishers to form Eidos Interactive. Through this transformation, Domark effectively disappeared as a standalone name, but its DNA lived on inside Eidos, which would later achieve global fame with titles like Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Hitman.