Electronic Arts has no shortage of cash from their wildly profitable franchises, and it appears that they will be adding a studio to their roster going forward. Today the company announced it has acquired Titanfall producer Respawn for over $300 million, with another $140 million of additional payments contingent on performance milestones.
Here is the full press release from EA:
Leading Development Studio Brings Top Talent & Award-Winning Titanfall IP to EA's Portfolio
"We've seen firsthand the world-class caliber of Respawn as a development studio with incredible vision, deep talent and an inspiring creative mindset," said
"We started Respawn with the goal to create a studio with some of the best talent in the industry, and to be a top developer of innovative games," said
Respawn is the creator and developer of the critically-acclaimed Titanfallfranchise that energized the first-person shooter genre with its innovative gameplay. The first game, Titanfall, was published by EA in 2014, and received global recognition with more than 75 top awards. Fans and critics fell in love with the game's refreshing, fast-paced multiplayer gameplay. Respawn and EA launched Titanfall 2 in late 2016, with a new single-player campaign and expanded multiplayer gameplay, resulting in one of the year's top-rated shooters.
Respawn will join EA's
Under the agreement, EA will pay
Standby for Titanfall's developer to be assimilated into EA.
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replyAsif Khan posted a new article, EA Acquires Respawn Entertainment For Over $300 Million
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Aaand another one's down, another one's down, another one bites the dust.
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Meh. At least now when someone blames EA for some problem with Titanfall, it will actually be their fault.
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Oh, respawn is dead now, they just won't know it for 5+ years.
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You can say that about any game studio right now.
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Most, not any, but it's the EA death knell that just rang.
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I know I defend them every time this happens, but when was the last time they actually closed a studio that was still making big hits? Maxis? Westwood? Black Box? EA Chicago? Visceral?
If anything, all of those had plenty of time or chances before they got canned for costing more money than they made. It’s business.-
The problem is that EA forces them to do things that no one likes and then shuts them down after the game does poorly.
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At least we still have Mass Effect. It's not like EA would fuck up a cash cow like that.
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The sadness consumes us all.
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Well, part of this is in the capability of the studio to prove to the company that its product is going to be successful.
That's a really hard thing to predict. The thing about larger publishers plus their subsidiary studios, is that you hear about canceled projects because of their massive marketing. In smaller studios, you never hear about their failures because there are not enough people there to get the story out. There are TONS of failure stories, though, and these small indie studios are typically one project away from folding up. -
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if a bunch of previously successful devs fall under new leadership and suddenly become unsuccessful what might be a common root cause? I mean EA presumably acquired them in the first place because they were deemed good and successful. And then they became not that. So...
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This has some of that information plus link to the podcast http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-23-manveer-heir-bioware-mass-effect-ea-monetisation
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Not true in many cases. They're certainly guilty of game design-by-committee/execs on the latest Need for Speeds, but I wouldn't say that was universal.
- Before being folded into EALA, Westwood finished up with Dune: Emperor Messiah, Earth and Beyond, Legend of Black Kat and C&C Renegade, all of which were commercial failures and sub-par games.
- Origin (they made worlds, not downloads) got to make Ultima IX at great expense, which was broken and flawed as fuck.
- Visceral got to make a story-driven game and by all accounts the development process was a total mess. you can blame its LACK of online/lootboxes/whatever on its cancellation, but it's pretty clear its problems were deeper than that and EA would have let it live if it was on track to being Star War's Uncharted.
- Sim City 4 certainly suffered from the online requirement, but even disregarding that it was a sub-par game so Maxis' days were numbered, especially with The Sims Division being separate.
I could go on. It's business. No company, even EA, sets out to gobble up and shit out a game studio - they've given most of these studios arguably more chances than they deserved to come good. Any of those studios would have died sooner outside of publisher ownership/funding.
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Standby for assimilation, and then https://imgur.com/gallery/NZalt
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Damn, that's funny. Granted, I'd hate to be "that guy," but in a lot of cases, EA isn't all bad. It's actually a pretty complicated relationship between a publisher who purchases a studio and the remaining studio staff.
In many cases, EA brings stability and much-needed cash-infusion into struggling businesses. I guarantee you that most companies who choose to get acquired by EA are probably not in the best shape they could be in. It's super fucking hard to run a video game company.
However, the downside to EA's acquisition is that also bring more rigid structure and control. This could be in the form of stabilizing benefits to be in line with the rest of the corporation. It could also be in the form of common technologies in order to save on corporate licensing costs. Another way that EA changes companies is it gives these companies access to global talent, as the pool of talent resources that EA has access to is much greater than that of a local company. These changes are very rarely transformational. Rather, they are incremental, and they chip away at what made the original studio what it was. The studio changes its identity, although if it still has its original founders, it can resist those changes pretty hard.
The downstream effects of all of these positive and negative influences is that it changes the culture. People who appreciate the autonomy and control of being an independent studio will leave. Honestly, I would say these are usually the most innovative folks. When your hands get tied on too many things, but you are also incredibly talented, the world is your oyster. The best talent in the industry is hard fought over, especially considering the average game developer's career is pretty short.
TL;DR - an EA acquisition is complicated with pros and cons.
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Welp... GG
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Well good news is that apparently Titanfall 1 and 2 did well right?
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Wait til you get Titanfall with cover shooting mechanics! And who needs that parkour shit no one wants to jump around like that.
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Goodbye Respawn, Titan "Fall".
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