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And that was that. In one fell, $750 million dollar swoop, EA gobbled up PopCap. To most, it was just another day in gaming's primordial ooze of a business sector – where everyone devours everyone else in a bitter bid for survival. Slip on your gamervision glasses, however, and you'll see a different story altogether. “Battlefield 3, Need for Speed publisher acquires folks behind Peggle, Plants vs Zombies.” Sorry, what? Let us wash the crazy out of our ears. PopCap, however, insists that it leaped into the belly of the beast quite willingly.
“We're not speaking a different language, because everyone's talking about games," PopCap founder John Vechey told Gamasutra. "They've got this amazing digital publishing... and we are going to get to so many more customers so much quicker, and better. We can get to our objectives a lot faster than we would have independently."
"PopCap needs to do what PopCap does," he added. "We're going to take advantage of their world-class digital publishing, so we can just focus on making great games... We're focused on making great games and getting them to everyone in the world. Late in the fall, we said, 'let's explore options without going public that might get us to our goals faster or better.'”
Unsurprisingly, EA also has something of a high opinion of its nearly one billion dollar bedfellow. Among other things, EAi executive VP and GM Barry Cottle called PopCap “the Pixar of the game industry” and spoke highly of its ability to create “killer IP.”
In other words, the two didn't rush into some ill-advised marriage because they were blinded by dollar signs. Initial indications, then, seem to suggest that EA won't be bulldozing PopCap's offices to replace them with a soulless sequel factory. Granted, words are only worth so much. In the event of Pegglefield 3 or Plants vs Zombies vs The NFL Lockout, you're welcome to join us in our underground ice fortress of solitude. We've kept it nice and warm just in cas-- wait. No. No. Noooooooooo.
Comments are closed on this article
Holly Golightly
July 14, 2011 at 2:04pm
Sigh, EA will always buy out the gaming industry. Sigh, this is nothing new...
RUSENSITIVESWEETNESS
July 14, 2011 at 11:33am
PopCap is toast. The only thing EA does well is alienate customers and stifle creativity.
Ghok
July 14, 2011 at 10:50am
I'm not saying that Pop Cap's games will suck now, but I think there's a much larger chance of it happening if gamers don't bitch about their desire to not see that happen.
TommM
July 13, 2011 at 10:36pm
How many times have we seen smaller, creative studios eaten up by the mega publishers with promises of "it'll only make our games better," only to see their creativity and innovation completely buried?
I mean we're talking EA here. PopCap ceased to exist as one of those smaller, creative studios effective today.
Gezzer
July 14, 2011 at 1:42am
Yeah, EA's track record when it goes to bringing smaller studios into the "family" isn't great. I guess all the major publishers have torpedoed a few darlings but EA? First they lure them in, then they set them up, then start to dictate what they think should be important, then they close them when the sales slump.
