Building Blockbusters with Perforce

You signed up to develop games, not to chase down the latest version of an important file. With Perforce, you're free to concentrate on the important stuff while Perforce helps manage your development projects.

By managing all types of digital assets (source, art, audio, documents, and other binaries), the Perforce Software Configuration Management (SCM) system accelerates game development and keeps projects on schedule for an industry where time-to-market is crucial. Boost your team's productivity with Perforce's responsive server, prudent use of network bandwidth, and detailed change history tracking.

Game developers at more than 100 companies—including Electronic Arts, Sony Online Entertainment, Nintendo, and Ubisoft—use the Perforce SCM system to manage their digital assets during the development of wireless, console, PC, and MMORG games.

Download a free, full-featured copy and see for yourself why Perforce is the must-have tool for game development.

Run on multiple platforms

Different teams require different platforms. With Perforce, that's not a problem. There is a visual client interface for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The fully scriptable command-line client runs on a wide variety of platforms (PDF), including Windows, and nearly every UNIX variation from Linux and Mac OS X to Solaris.

Recreate, retrace, and reproduce any codeline in seconds

Perforce changelists provide a complete history of your project's development. All multi-file changes are identified with a unique number and description. Changelists also guarantee database integrity: if there's a conflict in one file, none of the files in that changelist will be submitted to the server until the conflict is resolved. You're not left to wonder which files were submitted.

Create branches for parallel versions of code and art

Perforce's Inter-File Branching lets you create branches and then easily merge changes between codelines. Whether you're merging files between branches or merging because of concurrent edits to the same file, Perforce's built-in conflict detection and resolution process quickly identifies files that require attention to resolve conflicts. Perforce includes merge and differencing tools, and supports third-party merge tools.

Link bug reports with their changes

Comprehensive reporting lets producers stay up to date with instant reports on open/closed bugs by project. Perforce Jobs provide a customizable, built-in defect tracking system with issue-tracking, filtering/searching, and linking of jobs with changes made by team members. And Jobs can be extended through integrations with third party defect tracking systems for complex workflow requirements.

Integrate Perforce with your existing systems

Perforce offers a flexible solution that you can link with your existing systems—from build tools and APIs to user interfaces—or extend to meet your specific needs. There are also plug-ins for a range of popular IDEs, web authoring tools, and Microsoft Office.

Implement asset management quickly and easily

The Perforce Plug-in for Graphical Tools, P4GT, gives artists seamless access to version control from within Adobe Photoshop, Avid's Softimage XSI, Autodesk's 3ds Max, and Maya. P4GT is easy to install and adds a "Perforce" menu to the graphical tool. The plug-in automatically determines which assets are under Perforce's control.

All trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Developed with Perforce

Guild Wars Factions

Guild Wars Factions from ArenaNet®

Hellgate: London

Hellgate: London from Flagship Studios

Urban Chaos: Riot Response

Urban Chaos: Riot Response from Rocksteady

Need for Speed

Need for Speed Underground from EA Games

Unreal Tournament 2003

Unreal Tournament from Digital Extremes

What They're Saying

Secret Level
"It's hard to believe that we used to run our business without Perforce and even harder to imagine how we could build our current projects without it!"

—Jeremy Gordon, Studio Director & CTO

Flagship Studios
"Perforce is the heart of our organization. I can't think of another part as intrinsic and important to our development as Perforce.

— Brent Shinn, IT Manager

Case Study: Ubisoft
"The speed, reliability, and scalability of Perforce are crucial to Ubisoft, with more than 1,000 users depending on it. Our teams are getting bigger and bigger and Perforce has become the central and critical tool to store everybody's work."

— Nicolas Beaufils, Technical Architect

Case Study: ArenaNet
"Perforce plays an instrumental role in the release and ongoing development of Guild Wars. Perforce is a great product, and our entire programming team, many of whom are SourceSafe refugees, is as enamored with Perforce as one can possibly be about SCM software."

— Brett Vickers, Team Lead

Rockstar San Diego
"We're all incredibly happy with both your product and your support of it."

— David Etherton, Chief Software Architect

Irrational Games Australia
"Irrational Games Australia originally chose Perforce because it provided a robust version control system for the programming team. However, we decided it could be the best solution to all our asset management problems."

— Tony Oakden, Producer

Game Coding Complete
"I've used [Perforce] for years and it's never let me down. The first thing you'll notice is its speed. It's damn fast. The architecture simply blows the pants off anything that uses the network directory hierarchy."

— Mike McShaffry, Author

In the News

Gamedev.net Product Review: Perforce 2008 Capability-wise, Perforce really operates at a "sweet spot"...and is a very well designed and integrated set of tools.

BCS: Rebel with a cause Henry Tucker speaks to Rebellion's CTO, Chris Kingsley, about the future of games, project failure and changing gaming perceptions.

Press release: Eden Games Creates Innovative Games Faster with Help from Perforce SCM [PDF]

Gamasutra.com: Perforce SCM winsGame Developer's 2007 Front Line Award

Develop: Project Management Case Study Q&A: Rebellion Rebellion's CTO, Chris Kingsley, is quizzed about project management and how the independent uses Perforce.

Develop: Perforce Named as Tools Provider Finalist in 2007 Develop Industry Excellence Award

Gamasutra.com: Perforce Selected by Panzer Tactics Developer

Computer Graphics World: Rocksteady Studios Chooses Perforce

TVG: Free Radical Design Chooses Perforce to Streamline Asset Management

Develop: One for All [PDF]

Free Download

Try Perforce for free!
Download a full-featured, non-expiring, 2-user, 5-client version now.

Have a larger team? Get an evaluation license. Your free, full-featured 45-day evaluation includes unlimited access to our technical support staff.