

Electronic Arts to Acquire PopCap Games for $750 Million - acrum
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ea-to-acquire-popcap-games-2011-07-12

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malkia
Holy Crap. What's wrong with EA?

Our studio (Treyarch) was acquired for around 5-15mln (not sure the right
number), close number for Infinity Ward and other studios (there is report on
the net about public numbers).

But $750mln? Isn't the Pandemic acquisition pandemic enough? Who the fuck
drives EA?

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ctide
Apples to oranges. Treyarch at the time was little more than a studio that
handled farmed out jobs to translate existing games to other consoles. I don't
think they made any original games other than Die by the Sword at the time of
acquisition. Compare that to Popcap, who released multiple innovative and
original games across a wide variety of platforms. Just because Treyarch is
now busy cranking out Call of Duties doesn't mean that the team that was
acquired was anywhere near the level of Popcap.

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malkia
That's my point. We didn't do much at the beginning, yet succeeded later. In
contrast, EA has bought lots of expensive studios lately and they did not
succeed (and that's okay, as long as you haven't put much money into it).

Btw, singly.com looks awesome, and telehash seems very interesting!

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electromagnetic
Popcap has games that are brandable. Simply look at the success of Plants Vs
Zombies and how well Popcap managed to market it, and realise how much a
company like EA could mine out of it.

Plus they have Bejeweled and Zuma that are being exploited well already, but
Popcap really doesn't have the talents to market a game like Plants Vs Zombies
that's seemingly universally acceptable (I hadn't bought a single popcap game
until Plants Vs Zombies and I haven't touched another of their games since).

There's big money in intellectual property, especially when they have products
that have yet to be even exploited.

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malkia
I wish them all the best. Especially to all of the employees!

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georgemcfly
How is Zynga supposedly worth over 20 times what PopCap is being bought for? I
must be massively underestimating how much people spend on in-game items in *
Ville\\* Wars. Or really overestimating how many copies of PvZ have been sold
(I've bought it twice). And PopCap's revenue model isn't even almost wholly
dependent on another companies success.

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kin
Question: How old are you? I'm 23 and after entering the social gaming
industry as a developer, the numbers are actually incredibly surprising. I'm
talking like... several hundred thousand buckaroos a day from a single game,
all from the same market of middle aged stay-at-home/desk-job women.

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bersekro88
buckaroos? How much does that transfer over to USD?

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ericwan
i believe it is 1 to 1

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unwind
I enjoyed PopCap's announcement:
<http://www.popcap.com/ea?icid=ea_HP_PLARGE_pc_EN>. :)

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hristov
Much less than the 1+ billion techcrunch reported.

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Tiktaalik
Factoring in possible bonuses EA could pay as much as 1.3 billion.
[http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/12/confirmed-ea-buys-popcap-
ga...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/12/confirmed-ea-buys-popcap-games-
for-750-million-plus-earn-out/)

~~~
hristov
That does not mean much. Those bonus figures seem very far fetched.

