Fritz SchC3A4fer

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Fritz Schäfer,

a German electrical engineer, game developer and entrepreneur in the computer games industry. He studied electrical engineering at RWTH Aachen University, and started to develop a chess program called Boss on a Commodore PET 2001 as hobby project in the late 70s. When Commodore released the VIC-20 in 1981, Fritz Schäfer fulfilled his ambitions to commercialize the VIC-20 adapted Boss, and founded Kingsoft GmbH. The Boss was renamed to Grandmaster for the international release covering the Commodore 64 [1]. After expansion due to distribution of third-party-developed games, and a long-term prosperous period, Kingsoft was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1995 [2], while Schäfer left that company short after and continued his business in the computer games industry.