Playfair Interactive

Playfair Interactive was a North American video game company based in Canada as a subsidiary of Magic World. It was established in December 1992 and began developing/publishing games the following year, primarily for personal computers and later console platforms such as the SNES, Genesis, PlayStation and Game Boy among others.

Although they primarily subcontracted games to other developers, some titles for personal computers were developed in-house with a team of programmers at their Toronto headquarters.

In addition to games based on Magic World intellectual properties, companies such as Cinemator and Droimétra-DMT also licensed to Playfair for game adaptations.

Despite a fairly smooth track record for sales of games, a change in management and concerns regarding changes in tastes for gamers into the new millennium led to the company as a whole renaming itself as Bronzelight Studios in 2000, keeping Playfair as a sublabel for more kid-oriented before getting retired altogether in spring 2002.

From 1993 until 1995, most Playfair console games were co-distributed by Sony Imagesoft in North America until the latter's closure that same year. Around 1996, their computer games (along with some console releases) had North American joint distribution rights switched to Hasbro Interactive and NewKidCo handled console releases until 2001 (shortly before Playfair ceased to exist as a name).

Following Bronzelight's closure in 2008, Magic World reacquired the rights to various games from what was once Playfair and has since made them available on platforms such as GOG.com, Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Store and Steam. Many of these games are available individually or in the form of compilations. Playfair has also been revived as an in-name only sublabel of Magic World Digital Entertainment exclusively for these re-releases.