While Take-Two was originally expressing interest in acquiring Codemasters for a set amount of money, EA stepped in and offered a better deal. As such, EA has announced earlier that they’ll acquire Codemasters in a deal valued at 1.2 billion USD.
Interestingly enough, Take-Two and Codemasters had already agreed to a prior deal. Still, the company decided to go with EA’s offer as they felt it was more aligned with Codemaster’s racing pedigree. The total acquisition of Codemasters will be completed in Q1 2021.
While it’s possible, Take-Two can counteroffer this deal, as they were banking on Codemasters on supplementing their own sports titles and would have been a great fit to bring back fan-favorite racing series, Midnight Club. I know I would have loved to see this, as Take-Two and Rockstar haven’t touched the series since 2009.
“We believe there is a deeply compelling opportunity in bringing together Codemasters and Electronic Arts to create amazing and innovative new racing games for fans,” said Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts.
“Our industry is growing, the racing category is growing, and together we will be positioned to lead in a new era of racing entertainment. “We have admired Codemasters’ creative talent and high-quality games for many years. With the full leverage of EA’s technology, platform expertise, and global reach, this combination will allow us to grow our existing franchises and deliver more industry-defining racing experiences to a global fan base.”
“Electronic Arts and Codemasters have a shared ambition to lead the video game racing category. The Board of Codemasters firmly believes the company would benefit from EA’s knowledge, resources, and extensive global scale – both overall and specifically within the racing sector.”
Now, this acquisition does pose several questions. Will EA change up Codemasters’ structure and absorb them into EA, or will they leave them alone and let them do their own thing? Will Codemasters become the new developer of EA’s Need for Speed series, which is currently being handled by Criterion Games? Previously handled by Ghost, who worked on the Need For Speed games before EA shifted them to a support team for all of EA. At this point, all of these are valid questions.
One thing is for sure; there’s bound to be some shake-ups as there’s quite a bit of overlap with Codemasters joining the EA fold. We’ll be watching as the situation develops.
