About Us

Who are we?

HeavenGames LLC is a company headquartered in Malden, MA that operates a suite of high-quality, PC-game-related fan sites and is well known throughout the gaming community for the incredible wealth of content and gaming resources available on the sites. Many large game sites on the internet try to cover every game in existence, leading to very bland coverage of each game. HeavenGames (HG) has chosen to focus on a narrow selection of games but with exhaustive coverage of each and every one of those games. This has allowed HG to develop strong communities of gamers and has allowed HG to become a valuable resource for game developers.

Vibrant and Active Fansites

Currently, HeavenGames serves as a portal to over two dozen well-groomed sites covering mainly RTS and City-Building genres. An important component of those sites are their forums; at nearly 200,000 registered users and millions of posts, they are a veritable hive of fan and HG staff activity. The forums are also regularly visited by the developers. Visitors of HG have been able to suggest game enhancements to the developers that have ultimately been included in game sequels or patches.

Our site content is second to none as well. HeavenGames’ user-created file database is particularly notable with nearly 35,000 files – from scenarios to modpacks to utilities. It’s not surprising, then, that HeavenGames also has some of the very best user–created files on the internet. A number of our files have been recognized by major magazines as the very best for their respective games. Even more than that, some of the best designers at HeavenGames have gone on to designing in the gaming industry; among many other major companies, they have worked at Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Iron Lore Studios, and Stainless Steel Studios. One designer is currently teaching game design as a Professor at NYU.

Industry-Wide Renown

Over its decade of operation, HeavenGames has been renowned by many as the place to go for great downloads, news, and forums. It has been mentioned in multiple major PC gaming magazines — including Computer Gaming World (July 2000, p70), PC Zone (August 2003, p112), and PC Gamer (April 1999, p82/April 2006, p67/December 2006, 80). It runs two official community sites, for Age of Empires and Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War. Finally, game developers have chosen HG to host four beta tests: for Age of Mythology, Tzar: The Burden of the Crown, Stronghold, and Stronghold Crusader.

Not only has HeavenGames received acclaim, but its employees have as well; an extremely large number have gone on to work in the gaming industry. The original webmaster of Heaven (Mike McCart) has worked for Ensemble Studios — developer of the Age of Empires series — only to be followed by another HG webmaster. Stainless Steel Studios — developer of Empire Earth — hired a number of our staff members and site visitors to help develop and craft scenarios for Empire Earth. Many others work for Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Vivendi Universal, Blizzard, and a number of other leaders in the gaming industry. Two HG staff members have even been named by Microsoft as Games for Windows MVPs: HoYin “Zen” Au and Karen “Kester” Straube.

HeavenGames LLC is a privately owned and operated company. It was officially registered as a partnership on Oct 23, 2000 although the earliest Heaven site dates back to early 1997.

HeavenGames’ mailing address is:
HeavenGames LLC
175 Crescent Ave
San Francisco, CA 94110
USA

HeavenGames is owned by:

  • Sergio “Socvazius” Prado (USA), CEO, CFO
  • JanJaap “Jayhawk” van den Hurk (NL), COO

The owners manage all operations of the website and make all decisions related to which games are covered, site design, staff members, advertising etc. The owners do not receive a salary from HG and are only paid if the company has excess profits. Each owner holds regular, full-time jobs in addition to their positions at HeavenGames.

HG has a large and dedicated staff spanning much of the globe who all work on a volunteer basis. If financial conditions allow, HG makes every effort to distribute some profits to the most valuable staff members, but this is not guaranteed. The staff fills many roles but the main tasks are news posting, writing articles and moderating forums. Without the fantastic staff of volunteers, HG would be a lonely and boring place.

Certainly, nobody at HeavenGames works on the site for financial gain. The owners and staff of HG run the site out of a love for gaming, for working on the internet and for interacting with the fans and developers. HG continually works to improve the quality of its sites and to implement new tools that will decrease site maintenance time and enhance the experience for the visitors. This is in particular evidence in the custom-built, automated forums and downloads sections of each of HG’s sites.

Lastly, on behalf of the staff and myself, I would personally like to thank the great visitors who have made HG into the success it is today. Much of the content around HG is provided by visitors and the most successful areas of HG are driven primarily by visitor input. From the very beginning, HG was envisioned as a community building site and we are happy to say that HG has one of the best communities of gamers on the internet not to mention forums that are some of the most actively developer visited in the world. It is our hope that we will be able to continue working on the sites and providing resources for gamers and developers across the globe for many years to come.

Sergio Prado
Socvazius
HeavenGames LLC