In late 2009 a game development competition called Assemblee began on the TIGSource forums. The competition was broken into two parts:
Many games were made for this competition using these free non-commercial resources. You’ll find some of these still out there today. WildShadow purchased commercial licenses for the works they used and continued working on the game long after the competition was over.
Original credits:
Programming information (from Amitp):
On June 20, 2011 Realm of the Mad God was released on the Chrome Web Store. This was the first time RotMG was made available outside of the official, original website.
On October 31, 2011 the game was released on Kongregate.
A new developer, Willem Rosenthal, was hired sometime in November or December 2011 and was tasked with creating artwork and design.
On February 20, 2012 the game was released on Steam.
Wild Shadow announced on June 18, 2012 that they had been acquired by Kabam. Alex and Rob both departed to explore new challenges while Willem remained with Kabam and continued developing new content until his departure on June 21, 2013.