Electronics Arts has announced it has finalized the acquisition of Respawn Entertainment — a deal which puts the once-independent developer in the hands of the second largest gaming company in the Americas and Europe by revenue and market capitalization.
Here’s the announcement:
“On Nov. 9, 2017 we announced an agreement to acquire Respawn Entertainment, LLC, one of the leading independent game development studio and creators of AAA shooter and action games including the critically-acclaimed Titanfall franchise. Today, Dec. 1, 2017, we have completed the acquisition of Respawn on the terms previously disclosed.”
It has been a turbulent time for EA, so there’s no doubt its pleased that deal wasn’t altered and was finalized in its favor. As you might recall, things started going off the rails for EA when it was revealed in October that Visceral Games would be shutting down, taking the highly-anticipated Star Wars game down along with it. It hadn’t even been a full month since then when news broke that EA was caught implementing microtransactions which took advantage of the terrible progression system in Star Wars Battlefront 2. Following that revelation, the following week or so was nothing but chaos: fans revolted, lawmakers started scrutinizing lootboxes, mistakes were made and EA’s stock value took a hit.
It was with those incidents in mind that many had assumed (or hoped) that the deal, which was originally announced on Nov. 9, would be impacted in some manner and possibly allow Respawn an opportunity to leverage a better a deal.
Of course, we now know this didn’t happen.
Now with the deal finalized and Respawn now a part of EA’s Worldwide Studios organization, there are quite a few developments to look forward to. Respawn is currently working on a new Titanfall game, a “VR experience,” and a Star Wars action game. Furthermore, there’s word that the studio might be looking at a move to the Frostbite engine. Meanwhile, CFO Blake Jorgenson recently stated that he “certainly sees” that there are other studios “that could become sub-scale over time and will want to be part of a large organization.” In other words, more acquisition of this type could be on announced in the near future.