Gears of War 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360. It is the second installment of the Gears of War series, with lead design by Cliff Bleszinski. The game was released in North America, Europe and Australia on November 7, 2008, and was released in Japan on July 30, 2009. The game expands technically on the previous game by using a modified Unreal Engine 3. The development team brought in comic book writer Joshua Ortega to help write the plot for the game.

Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following its first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who has been its vice president since. After moving the headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio changed its name to Epic Games.