ears of War was developed by Epic Games. Cliff Bleszinski, who has previously worked on Epic’s Unreal Tournament games, served the series’ lead game designer for the first three installments. He was inspired by gameplay elements from Resident Evil 4, Kill Switch, and Bionic Commando.[4] The series was also guided by Rod Fergusson, the executive producer and director of development of Epic Games until 2012.[5][6] The first four installments of the Gears of War series used a modified version of the Unreal Engine 3 engine.[7][8] On January 27, 2014, Microsoft acquired all rights to the franchise from Epic Games. Canadian studio The Coalition developed Gears of War 4, which was released on October 11, 2016 for the Xbox One and Windows 10.