EA Buys PopCap

EA has just announced it has bought PopCap, developer of fantastic titles such as Plants vs. Zombies. The fee paid was $650 million in cash and $100 million in shares of EA common stock. That’s more than I earn in a week.

This purchase puts EA in an incredibly strong position in terms of the mobile/download market. EA CEO, John Riccitiello, had the following to say:

“EA and PopCap are a compelling combination. PopCap’s great studio talent and powerful IP add to EA’s momentum and accelerate our drive towards a $1 billion digital business. EA’s global studio and publishing network will help PopCap rapidly expand their business to more digital devices, more countries, and more channels.”

Source: Press Release

 

23 Comments

  1. Yowzers! I know some really great people at PopCap. I’ll send a nice fruit basket tomorrow.

  2. Nice one EA! good for business, good for gamers :D

    • nothing ea does is good for gamers (but thats just my humble opinion)

      • I’m not sure why people hate on EA for seemingly no reason whatsoever.

      • I’ve bought from EA since the original Test Drive games on the C64 and apart from their cash in’s on the yearly FIFA and NFS games i think as a company they are spot on.

      • Games companies don’t get much better than EA imo. Even their yearly cash-ins like FIFA are of a good standard

  3. Was this rumoured a while back? Maybe I dreamt it. Nevertheless, I hope EA prove themselves to be a safe pair of hands for this top studio.

  4. Oh wow.

  5. *jaw drops, picks up jaw, jaw drops again*

  6. Lucky bastards. The only way I’ll ever see $650 million in cash is if I…rob…PopCap… Excuse me, I have a large mechanical spider to build.

    • Have we been watching Wild West again.

      • Wild Wild West even.

      • I can neither confirm nor deny that I secretly love all Will Smith films.

      • It’s got Salma, why bring Smith into this?

      • Salma, I meant Salma. *cough.

      • Nothing wrong with a bit of man love for the Fresh Prince! :)

  7. Oh! Now that’s interesting. Hopefully this will mean more great titles from this solid studio, and that they can have a bigger budget on future titles.

  8. OMG, I totally did not expect this! :O

    Hopefully this means there will be more PopCap games and quicker releases between different platforms. :P

  9. Does this mean all non-iOS games will only be available via Origin then? Bejeweled is probably my favourite PopCap game.

  10. Can’t wait to see how much it’ll cost to buy an online pass for Bejewelled 3 ;p

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