{"id":4798,"date":"2017-11-09T22:20:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T22:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/309357"},"modified":"2017-11-09T22:20:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T22:20:00","slug":"ea-buys-titanfall-dev-respawn-entertainment-for-as-much-as-455m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/11\/09\/ea-buys-titanfall-dev-respawn-entertainment-for-as-much-as-455m\/","title":{"rendered":"EA buys Titanfall dev Respawn Entertainment for as much as $455M"},"content":{"rendered":"

Electronic Arts announced today<\/a> that it’s cut a deal to acquire longtime partner Respawn Entertainment (Titanfall, Titanfall 2<\/em>) for $151 million in cash, plus as much as $304 million if Respawn hits certain performance milestones through 2022.<\/p>\n

This is a big deal, literally and figuratively. It marks the end of Respawn’s seven-year run as an independent venture, which began in 2010 when the studio was launched<\/a> by ousted Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West.<\/p>\n

In the years following, a good chunk of Infinity Ward’s staff<\/a> made the jump to Respawn to work on the studio’s flagship Titanfall<\/em> franchise. Though West eventually left the studio<\/a>, Zampella has remained a lead figure<\/a> for the Titanfall<\/em> games, which have been published by EA.<\/p>\n

In a blog post<\/a> published to the Respawn website, Zampella stated that he plans to continue running Respawn in addition to his new work as a member of EA’s studio leadership team. He also claimed that work will continue unabated on both the Titanfall<\/em> franchise and the studio’s unnamed Star Wars project.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019ve had success as an independent company but as we look to how we want to compete in the future, and the challenges that face us in a rapidly changing landscape, now is the time for us to combine forces with a global industry leader like EA. While it wasn\u2019t necessary, going with EA made a lot of sense,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

“I will still be running things at Respawn and will also be a part of the studio leadership team at EA. There will be no layoffs or major organization changes within Respawn. All games currently in development are continuing as planned.”<\/p>\n

The terms of the acquisition state that Respawn will now be a part of the EA Worldwide Studios division, alongside outfits like Motive Studios and Ghost Games.<\/p>\n

In addition to the afore-mentioned $151 million in cash up front, EA has agreed to pay “up to $164 million in long-term equity in the form of restricted stock units to employees, which will vest over four years”, as well as more cash (up to a maximum of $140 million) based on “achievement of certain performance milestones, relating to the development of future titles” through 2022.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, this news comes less than a month after EA made a public show of shutting down\u00a0Visceral Games<\/a> and overhauling its Star Wars game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Electronic Arts announced today that it’s cut a deal to acquire longtime partner Respawn Entertainment (Titanfall, Titanfall 2) for $151 million in cash, plus as much as $304 million if Respawn hits certain performance milestones through 2022. This is a big deal, literally and figuratively. It marks the end of Respawn’s seven-year run as an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}