Moorhuhn

The game (now distributed as Die Original Moorhuhn Jagd) was developed by the Dutch Witan studios and the Art Department advertising agency as an advertisement for Johnnie Walker whisky in 1999.[2] Imitating the Glorious Twelfth, the game's objective was to shoot down, through a point-and-click interface, as many cartoonish "swamp chickens" (German: Moorhühner; literally "moorhens", i.e. willow ptarmigans) as possible in 90 seconds. The game was originally known as KippenSchieten and won third place at the Bizarre 98 programmer's meeting.

The game was originally not intended for distribution, but was made available to play on laptops in bars by promoters dressed up as hunters.[2] It was soon illicitly copied, however, and became widely available for download on private websites.[2] The publisher's initial irritation at this subsided after the game received favorable mentions in popular media and demand for it grew. From 1999 onwards the game was officially made available for download by Art Department.[2] It became wildly popular in German-speaking Europe, to the point of being denounced in the media as a threat to the bottom line of businesses, on account of the number of hours wasted by employees playing the game.

The game's success spawned a great deal of merchandise, a comic book series, an animated TV series,[3] several motion picture scripts (although no movie was ever made) and a BMG-produced single (Gimme more Huhn by comedian Wigald Boning).[3] It also caused Germany's authoritative Duden dictionary to include the word "Moorhuhn".[1]

Propelled by the game's popularity, its Bochum-based publisher Phenomedia AG, who had acquired Art Department,[2] went public in late 1999 at the height of the dot-com bubble and attained a market value of up to one billion Euro.[4]

In 2002, the stock value rapidly collapsed after it became known that the company's leaders were under investigation for falsifying balance sheets.[1] Chairman of the Vorstand Markus Scheer and CFO (Finanzvorstand) Björn Denhard, who confessed to the falsifications,[5] were fired.[1] In 2009, they were sentenced by a German court to 46 and 36 months' imprisonment, respectively, for securities fraud and other infractions.[4]

Phenomedia AG underwent insolvency proceedings. Its assets, including the Moorhuhn series, were bought by a successor company, phenomedia publishing GmbH, which continues to publish Moorhuhn games. But now the series is owned by the company AK tronic due to phenomedia going bankrupt. [4]

• Official website