Electronic Arts Buys Criterion, RenderWare

CFresquet writes "Gamesindustry.biz reports that Electronic Arts has purchased developer Criterion Software. Criterion is the game developer behind Burnout 3 and 'anticipated first person shooter Black', but also makes RenderWare, arguably the most popular 3rd party game engine solution used in PC, console, and hand-held game development. With this purchase, EA now suddenly has its fingers in the development of many of its competitor's games. Formerly independent studios now find themselves unexpectedly partnered with the gorilla of the industry, and EA could be in a position to leverage its ownership of this technology when negotiating with publishing agreements with studios." Intriguingly, this means that the engine technology powering Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City (and GTA: San Andreas?) is now EA-owned, though Criterion's David Lau-Kee claims "a win for everybody", arguing the takeover gives RenderWare "the capability to step up today and say to the entire industry, you know, 'We'll help you out?'"

Will there be "secret" features inthe game engine?

It certainly must be tempting to either add features that only EA games will be able to make use of, or to slow down development of the version they liscense to others while adding features for their own games.

how can this be good news?

yay, another supercompany turning a great industry into another money-whoring industry

no doubt they'll decide to start pumping out crappy games from their newly purchased studios

I see no alarm.

I somehow fail to see the alarm in this. Yes, EA now owns a development tool. Thats nice. Its not like they have any control over the companies using it. They can't exactly say 'Stop developing a competing product or we will pull the plug.' Did Borland have control over companies that used its C compiler? At worst, they will just make future releases garbage, and many companies will switch over to another tool.

Re:I see no alarm.

Its not like they have any control over the companies using it. They can't exactly say 'Stop developing a competing product or we will pull the plug.'

The problem is that i'm pretty sure RenderWare is a licensed product. They probably can't revoke the license for any current games, but they can certainly refuse to renew it for any upcoming games. So yes, they can in fact threaten to pull the plug.

And even if i'm wrong about the licensing bit, they can always just refuse to release any new updates publically and keep them for themselves (and any companies who choose to cooperate with them) instead, which would be almost as bad.

Let's call a spade a spade...

In the interest of being fair, shouldn't /. have a Larry Probst icon with borg-like appendages?

In another news...

In another news, RenderWare software, out of the blue and without a rational explanation, drops 20fps, crashes time after time and "inspires" a series of mediocre movie adaptations and sport games. The dev team at Criterion is still trying to figure it out.

Well expect these companies to...

suck after 3-5 years.

Considering that many EA bought companies flounder or suffer, EA has a bad track record handling good software companies.

Re:Well expect these companies to...

Maxis is doing fine (the sims)

Blackbox is doing fine (NFS underground).

EA Tiburon (Madden) is doing fine.

People say EA destroyed Origin, but Origin was long dead before being acquired.

People bitch about EA's sports games, but those sports games are actually good.

And and there are studios that didn't survive their acquisition (or rather, their best employees were relocated, and the rest was shutdown). And of course there are some games EA puts out that aren't as good as the rest.

But get real, EA puts out a lot of really good titles. And EA must have great tools and libs. On consoles, a good portion of their games look better then the majority of other titles.

Are you telling me FIFA doesn't look awesome? Are you telling me SSX 3 doesn't look gorgeous? (and runs at 60 fps on a ps2 for most areas)

I've noticed that people always hate #1. No matter the industry, the sport, etc. People hate EA, people hate Michael Schumacher, etc, etc.

EA now owns every developer who uses RW

Many companies make a middleware bet, wrap their toolchain and game franchise around it. The mediocre ones ship one game (if they're lucky) and then die. The successful ones develop an engine, toolchain, and gameplay that they'd like to reuse for the sequels. In the past, they paid more money to RW and they were set. Now, the price is negotiable with the gorilla of the industry.

Strategically, it means every studio has to get off of Renderware ASAP or they could be crushed if EA ever looks in their direction.

Since Renderware is basically console-only, its only real competitors are/were NDL and Alchemy. Neither are as big, but both may be perceived to be needed to fight against EA.

(I'd post a disclaimer here, but its no longer relevant)

Will EA destroy all?

While it's quite true that many of the games made by companies gobbled up by EA have become nothing but crap, that is irrelevent as RenderWare is not a game. At best, RenderWare will continue developing its software for license to other parties and will probably be used more and more in EA's projects. At worse, they'll turn it into EA-internal-only product and I'll suck. In either case, who cares? Developers can use anything they want to make their games, and those already in the process aren't going to suddenly find that the software stops working. All that matters to the consumer is having a good game.

crap

"and EA could be in a position to leverage its ownership of this technology when negotiating with publishing agreements with studios."

This can mean nothing but canceled games, and studios getting bent over the deal-making table.

Sounds like good news for middleware renderers

Good news for LithTech [lithtech.com], GameBryo [ndl.com], Unreal Engine [epicgames.com], Source Engine [valvesoftware.com], id Software licensing [idsoftware.com] and so on. All the other options available to middleware-using developers now that they have a good reason to make a switch.

Star Trek

You will be assimilated, resistance is futile.
Do not pass go, do not collect $200, in fact, we need your spleen and your left lung if it's not too much trouble.

I for one, hope that EA is like some kind of dying start, where it's gravity gets more intense as it gets full and they eventually explode all over the place.

Winning Eleven

It's interesting to note that RenderWare is also behind Konami's Winning Eleven [gamespot.com] soccer game.