EA Buys Bejeweled-Maker PopCap In Deal Worth Up To $1.3 Billion 104
donniebaseball23 writes "Weeks ago, rumors were that Electronic Arts had stepped up to the plate to buy mobile/casual gaming publisher PopCap, developer of titles such as Bejeweled and Plants vs Zombies. Today, EA has confirmed that it has purchased PopCap for a final sum of $650 million and $100 million in shares of EA common stock. There's also the possibility for up to $550 million in earn-outs for hitting 2013 financial milestones. That would bring the price to a whopping $1.3 billion. 'We picked EA because they have recast their culture around making great digital games,' said David Roberts, CEO of PopCap. 'By working with EA, we'll scale our games and services to deliver more social, mobile, casual fun to an even bigger, global audience.'"
More broadly, EA's plan for PopCap is: "don't break it."
Re:sounds pretty awesome (Score:4, Informative)
Back in those days, Trip Hawkins [wikipedia.org] was the CEO. He left in the early 90s, to found 3DO (which wasn't nearly as successful, to put it lightly). Unfortunately, after Trip Hawkins left, the company became quite a bit less creative, efficiently pumping out sequels to highly derivative games and buying smaller studios (and usually ruining them). I'll always remember the great EA games of the 80s fondly, but it's difficult to see how they're even remotely related to that company today. Hopefully, PopCap will fair better than Origin and Maxis, but I kind of doubt it. Actually, since I intensely dislike most social/casual games, I don't care, but it'd be nice to see someone actually flourish under the EA banner, for once. It's a shame that Trip Hawkins left the company, but it's hard to argue with their bottom line: EA is huge and highly profitable, despite their poor reputation among many gamers.
Interesting bit of trivia: Trip Hawkins was actually an early Apple employee.