Talk:Zachtronics

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Requested move 2 November 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. Jenks24 (talk) 11:58, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

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Zach Barth → Zachtronics – WP:COMMONNAME, Zach Barth (its lead designer) gets 39,700 hits on Google, while Zactronics (the company that makes its games, Barth also works with others there) gets 84,900 hits. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 19:19, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 20:29, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

• Zach Barth appears to meet notability guidelines for his biography to remain in Wikipedia. If his company is notable on its own merit, a separate article should be written about it.--John Cline (talk) 19:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
• @Dissident93 and John Cline: queried move request Anthony Appleyard (talk) 20:30, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
  • @John Cline: a separate article would simply be a list of games and nothing more, leaving both articles empty on content. Zactronics gets more page hits and it appears he himself goes by it more than his real name. The article can be re-written from a biography into a company article, which it pretty much is now anyway. Pinging @Masem: who also proposed the move. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 21:08, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you. I understand your contention. I disagree, however, and with your conclusion that the move is uncontroversial. Let us collaborate unto a consensus instead, and respectfully abide its counsel should one clearly emerge.--John Cline (talk) 20:30, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

• No problem with that. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 21:55, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

• Support per previous section. Zack Barth and Zachtronics are effectively equivalent terms in terms of content (what we have goes into either article, you can't split), and the company is seemingly more common. --MASEM (t) 21:29, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Founding Date unknown?

I have recently translated this article for the german Wikipedia and checked out some of the sources to verify some facts. I found that there is no source for the founding year in the article. The article says in multiple places that it was founded in 2000, but that doesn't seem realistic to me.

In an older version of this article, the founding year was listed as 2013, but this edit changed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zachtronics&diff=prev&oldid=944996542

Here are some dates i've been able to find:

• PitchBook claims it was founded in 2011: https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/160225-03#overview
• Tracxn claims it was founded in 2011: https://tracxn.com/d/companies/zachtronics/__FJ1jLXOynS_L2vBy1hzINngSOmbVohu3w8lzbP4Cfvg
• Crunchbase claims it was founded in 2013: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zachtronics
• RocketReach claims it was founded in 2013: can't link because of blacklist
• Nextsource claims it was founded in 2013: https://www.nextsource.io/company-profile/zachtronics_4f03ab97
• GameCompanies.com claims it was founded in 2014: https://gamecompanies.com/companies/zachtronics
• IGDB claims it was founded in 2008 and renamed in 2014: https://www.igdb.com/companies/zachtronics-industries
• IGDB also claims it was founded in 2000 (i think both are wrong): https://www.igdb.com/companies/zachtronics
• Zach Barths website lists "Zachtronics" from 2011-2022, and "Zachtronics Industries" as 2005 and says "[...] which is when I started using the "Zachtronics" moniker [...]": https://trashworldnews.com
• In the Book Zach-Like, Zach writes the following:

  SpaceChem was the first game that I sold and hoped to make any money from, which required starting a real company and forming a real team. This was when Zachtronics became a proper company, and when it began to get harder to distinguish what was my work versus the work of Zachtronics.

  — Zach Barth, Zach-Like p. 2, Introduction

There are also a number of articles which list 2000 as the founding year, but these are all from 2022, when the studio shut down, after the 2020 edit on Wikipedia (so i suspect they got their info from here...). I was unable to find any company registration documents, although i'm unsure if i was looking in the right places.

If i had to guess, then i would say that Zach Barth started releasing games using the name "Zachtronics Industries" sometime in the early 2000s, and then sometime in the early 2010s founded "Zachtronics LLC" as a legal entity (probably in 2011 or 2013, before the release of SpaceChem or Ironclad Tactics respectively, potentially under a different name, renaming it later).

Does anybody know where the registration documents can be found, to hopefully verify the founding date? What if it cant be verified? (i'm new on Wikipedia, i don't know how unverified facts are handled...) Aryezz (talk) 13:20, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Alliance Media Holdings, the owners of Zachtronics since 2016, list the founding as 2011 on their webpage: https://www.alliance.games/studios

This is probably the most reliable source, together with the Zach-Like introduction, written by Zach Barth.

I will try to find out some more about when Zach started releasing games under "Zachtronics Industries" (early-mid 2000s, but when exactly), and then edit the article with the corrected founding year and some info about games being released before the actual founding of the company. Aryezz (talk) 08:43, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I have now changed the founding date to 2011, as the 2 most reliable sources agree on this year. I was unable to find an exact year when Zach Barth started releasing games under Zachtronics Industries. His website lists "Zachtronics Industries" as a project from 2005, but there may have been earlier releases under the same name. Oh well. Aryezz (talk) 18:52, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 16 July 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jeffrey34555 (talk) 21:29, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

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Zachtronics → Zach BarthZach Barth – With the closure of Zachtronics but the opening of Coincidence, the latter unlikely to show its own notability beyond either Zachtronics or Barth himself, it makes better sense to now have this page at Barth, with both Zachtronics and Coincidence discussed (and proper linkage from redirects or dab pages). Going off what I'm seeing for Kaizen, from Coincidence, its still all tied to Barth himself and his team, and it doesn't make sense to cover Coicidence within a page about Zachtronics since that change was intended to move away from the stigma of making "zach-like" games. I recognize this is undoing the move request from 2017, but a lot has changed since. Masem (t) 04:11, 16 July 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 07:13, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose Zachtronics is not just Zach Barth. You are free to make a separate Zach Barth page and request a merge of this one, but a move would be completely changing its scope. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 23:30, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

  That seems needlessly pendantic. This would be no differ compared to someone like Maddy Thorson, and unless there is clearly more to be written about the businesses, the coverage of both companies are centered around Barth and his ideas that he has brought. Masem (t) 04:10, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

  I don't think it's "needlessly pendantic". If Zachtronics is ever independently notable of Zach Barth, it would cause a problem. This is just standard operating procedure. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 04:30, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. Both topics seem to satisfy the notability guidelines, with plenty of material for two articles. Andrewa (talk) 05:31, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Video games has been notified of this discussion. TarnishedPath^talk 07:13, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

Oppose - The separate subject is reliably notable and might need an article. Ahri Boy (talk) 01:25, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposed Split 23. March 2026

Last July there was a discussion about moving this page back to Zach BarthZach Barth which resulted in no move. Still, a lot of the content in this article is not directly related to Zachtronics as a company, such as parts of the Early games section, which seems to remain largely unchanged since before the move Zach BarthZach Barth → Zachtronics in 2017, and the parts about coincidence games.

I propose splitting the article into separate Zachtronics and Zach BarthZach Barth pages. Zachtronics could be focussed exclusively on the company, and Zach BarthZach Barth could document the early games/his education as well as any post-Zachtronics ventures.

Pinging all participants from last July's discussion: @Masem @TarnishedPath @Zxcvbnm @Andrewa @Ahri Boy 05hundred (talk) 13:55, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

The problem is you cant talk about one without talking aboutvthe other, and it would vreateva messy split with lots of duplicated content. If there was much more about his new company that might be reasonable but right not the notable of both Barth and Zachtronucs is too intermingled to split. Masem (t) 14:36, 23 March 2026 (UTC)