Aliens: Colonial Marines is a 2013 developed by and published by for , , and . Based on the universe and set shortly after the events of 's 1986 film , the game follows a group of Colonial Marines, a fictional military unit, as they confront the Weyland-Yutani corporation in an effort to rescue survivors from the spaceship. The game features a mode that supports both and gameplay, and a mode in which players compete in different scenarios.
Colonial Marines was developed over six years and suffered from a tumultuous development cycle. Because Gearbox decided to focus on other projects like and , they outsourced a significant part of the game to other studios. The game was heavily inspired by Cameron's film. Concept artist , who collaborated with Cameron to design the Sulaco, was hired to design locations. Four packs were released, adding multiplayer maps, a new cooperative mode, and a new campaign mode that takes place before the campaign of the base game.
Colonial Marines sold more than one million copies in the United States and Europe, but received unfavorable reviews from critics, who criticized its technical issues, low-quality graphics, and weak of enemies. The competitive multiplayer mode was highlighted as its strongest aspect. The game drew a significant controversy for featuring a lower graphical quality than that of press . This led two players to file a , claiming that Gearbox and Sega had the game, but it lost class-action status by 2015. In 2017, a improved the game's artificial intelligence by correcting an error in the game's code.