Electronic Arts Buying Developers Again

Mathew Everett 20 Jun, 2006 at 6:46pm ET Article published in Tech

Electronic Arts (EA) today announced that it will acquire Mythic Entertainment, game developer known Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) such as Dark Age of Camelot and the upcoming Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Mark-Jacobs, co-founder, president and CEO of Mythic will be become vice president of EA Mythic. Rob Denton, co-founder and COO of Mythic will become vice president and COO of EA Mythic. The firm’s 175 developers remain in Fairfax, VA, EA said.

Is there anything EA can’t buy?

Source: TG Daily

Comments

20 Jun 2006 ~ 6:50pm airbornflght

Sledgehammer70 wrote:

Is there anything EA can't buy?

Google?:p
20 Jun 2006 ~ 6:54pm Linc Actually, building a tech company you can flip to someone like Google or EA isn't a bad business model.
21 Jun 2006 ~ 4:17am Enverex Ugh, this sucks. To be perfectly honest I dislike EA, their practices, what they do to games, etc so them buying developers out can never be a good thing.
21 Jun 2006 ~ 9:55am GHoosdum If EA buys up all the good developers... then there won't be any more good games!
21 Jun 2006 ~ 11:43am Cyclonite I'm in agreement. EA has some decent games out, but they're not all as spectacular as they'd like you to believe. A lot of them just feel half-assed.
21 Jun 2006 ~ 12:33pm RADA

Enverex wrote:

Ugh, this sucks. To be perfectly honest I dislike EA, their practices, what they do to games, etc so them buying developers out can never be a good thing.

E,

While I don't feel as strongly as you ("this sucks"), I do have a problem with larger gaming companies buying up smaller companies..

..these moves have the tendancy to squash competiveness.
21 Jun 2006 ~ 2:49pm jradmin I remember when EA bought Origin. Thats when UO went to hell in a handbasket.
21 Jun 2006 ~ 2:57pm Enverex

RADA wrote:

E,

While I don't feel as strongly as you ("this sucks"), I do have a problem with larger gaming companies buying up smaller companies..

..these moves have the tendancy to squash competiveness.

It also squashes ideas and variety. Rather than multiple companies making games you have less and even if they still operate as a subsidiary they end up releasing less games, normally then ends up making the games similar to others from the main manufacturer, not usually as good and/or just exploiting something previous from that maker (like C&C Generals was, just the name).