PopCap Games To Be Acquired For $1 Billion+ | Hacker News Reader

PopCap Games To Be Acquired For $1 Billion+

techcrunch.com

104 pointsjmjerlecki46 comments

These guys deserve it. They've put out great games and worked damn hard to get to where they are. Good luck!

They got bought by EA. I don't think they deserved such a terrible fate.

Why not take the money and leave to form a new studio? After all the key resource in any game development company are the people, not the IP or existing software..

Most acquisitions have golden handcuff clauses where the shares given in the acquisition vest over time, no? So if they leave early, they don't get all their money. Although maybe the upfront earnout is enough for them to not care.

Indeed, that seems very likely. Thanks.

They were one of the few game studios with games that I could always expect to just work. No worries about weird DRM conflicts, having to be online, losing the CD or whatever having problems after computer upgrades. I could buy the games at the store on impulse with no worries, rather than having to decide if the game looked fun enough to bother spending time researching whether or not it would screw with my system or crash horribly or whatever else.

And now EA owns them...

At this rate, in Plants vs. Zombies XVIII, you will probably be able to connect to people playing Madden 2040 and have them invade your garden as football zombies. Or maybe they'll have merged with more companies by then and you'll have to grow your plants in Farmville first.

I would be extremely disappointed and disheartened if it's Zynga.

Well, even if it is Zynga, the talent at Popcap will get a big payout and if Zynga proves to be as stultifying and dull an environment as it seems, then they'll eventually drift away to form new ventures. Not a great deal for gamers, but at least the Popcap folks will get paid. Good for them.

I like Microsoft as the buyer here but here's a more interesting idea: one of the big Android vendors looking for differentiation.

They've had weak results with their ui layers so exclusive apps is the clear next step to take. This could be Amazon, Samsung, Motorola or Sony. Amazon would be my bet.

Has Amazon dipped its toes into content production before? Then again, I'm still occasionally surprised by the Kindle.

Rumor has it they're working on an Android tablet, which would probably involve some sort of content production.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/23/amazons-android-tablet-co...

Ahhh, thanks for that. I'd missed it.

Would someone really buy a tablet just to be able to run exclusive games on it? A gaming tablet maybe, but a regular tablet?

Plus, with games like Bejeweled or Plants vs Zombies, it's not exactly hard to duplicate in a matter of weeks and get rid of that exclusive edge.

I think if it was Amazon it would probably be exclusive Amazon Appstore instead of exclusive Amazon Tablet. Maybe exclusive Amazon App Store plus free on Amazon devices.

(1) Amazon's central business is the store, and something like this could be a loss leader to help build the Amazon Appstore vs Google Market.

(2) 90% of the value in these companies would be lost if you lost all phone sales (hence Rovio's short term exclusive on AB2).

Amazon bought Reflexive Entertainment, so there is a precedent of Amazon buying games companies. Afaik they moved a lot of the developers to A2Z Development, but I think they'd leave Popcap largely untouched.

I love their games, particularly Plants vs. Zombies all the old ones from the dawn of online flash games. So glad to see them do well.

That said, it wouldn’t be EA’s first big bet on a hot gaming startup

Not to nitpick, but can a 10-year-old company still be called a startup?

I just hope whoever buys them lets them continue working the way they do. I admire their product process so much.

I was curious about tencent. The link gives its market cap as 378.1B - but that's HKD. In USD, it's 48.54B.

That makes more sense, because the largest market cap in the world is 368B (Exxon). 2nd is 303B (PetroChina), 3rd is... Apple, with 295B. I didn't expect that. Apple is the 3rd largest company in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_...

It's interesting most people don't expect Apple to be the company acquiring, despite the fact they make a lot popular games for ios and mac. This is could be one of Apple misses if PopCap stop making games for Apple's platform, we know the story of Bungie. Apple is still not fully invested in the game development / gaming community. Apple already missed the opportunity to make Angry Birds it's Mario Brothers for the ios platform.

This will never happen. Ever. It just doesn't make sense if you know anything about Apple and their reluctant acceptance of gaming. Apple is also not about to go around maintaining software for other people's platforms.

> Apple already missed the opportunity to make Angry Birds it's Mario Brothers for the ios platform.

They aren't interested in owning the killer 3rd party apps or games for the platform. If Apple was at all interested in this they would have bought Tweetie, Reeder, and a number of other apps that are ubiquitous on iOS devices.

> This is could be one of Apple misses if PopCap stop making games for Apple's platform, we know the story of Bungie.

Bungie was a totally different situation. PopCap makes its cash from its multi platform strategy, make games that will run on anything and them port them to everything. Bungie desperately wanted Apple to buy them and become a company that it's not.

Frankly releasing Halo for the Mac even with Apple's help would have been a bad idea. It was unfortunate at the time, but everything worked out for the best. Bungie needed a bigger & simpler market for Halo, and Apple didn't need to be tied down by the demands of supporting gaming while they were still in the middle of fleshing out OS X.

Didn't Steve Jobs put out a standing offer to buy Nintendo at one point?

Apple purchased Emagic for their 3rd party software and skill. They bought "a killer 3rd party app". They did this because they did not have much in house talent working music production software. Since then Apple philosophy is to develop and hire talent in house, because it's typically much cheaper. But with games they face the same challenge they did when they bought Emagic, they don't have any great gaming talent at Apple. Apple currently promotes Infinity Blade in it's commercial as if it's exclusive to Apple, currently it is but that's not due to contract, Chair can port it if they want to.

> PopCap makes its cash from its multi platform strategy, make games that will run on anything and them port them to everything.

I know that, but that strategy could change with the purchase, that was my point. PopCap's team can get better or than get worse. If the get better and the new owners decided to go exclusive that could be a miss. I don't think Apple should buy Popcap, I think they should have worked a long term deal with them. Apple didn't buy Bungie because it's not fully invested in games. Just to illustrate Infinity Blade was mostly developed in a Microsoft os environment.

Did you just compare an unoriginal ripoff of five-year-old Flash games to a deservedly legendary classic?

Everything is a remix, but I'm not comparing game quality, just popularity. One thing is obvious both companies made very popular games on Apple's platform. Once could easily argue that Apple made more money directly from Popcap, there was no Apple app store (with Apple's 30% cut) to sell games back then.

Awesome! These guys really deserve it. Great company, great products. I have really nothing but good things to say about these guys.

Can't be too many players around to play in the $1B range. In the US from gaming industry:

EA (7.5B market cap)

Activision (13B market cap)

Microsoft

Sony

Valve (I somehow think they couldn't afford it)

Tech / Social:

Zynga

Google

Facebook

Foreign? No idea here.

Gree - $5B

DeNA - $6B

Tencent - $50B

Why do you think Valve couldn't afford it? They are a private company and so don't have to release revenue figures, but they make billions in revenue a year.

If Valve bought PopCap then it would be like a Reese's Pieces. Two already great tastes coming together. PopCap is the perfect cultural infusion that could get Steam opened up to a larger (non asian 17 year old male) market.

I would rule out: - Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Sony, Valve

Just doesn't fit the acquisition profile for those companies IMO. The Popcap guys are smart, and for a billion dollar valuation, the acquire'er would have to have some sizable synergistic advantages afterwards.

Not Valve? I dunno, it seems possible to me, but I think it's probably one of the companies trying to move into casual games, which PopCap are great at, I assume EA.

Valve would be able to make this purchase, but I don't see why they would. There is nothing for them to gain by it at all.

Did you miss where Microsoft just paid double what Skype was worth?

Exclusives for WP7, makes sense and reminds me of exactly what they did with Bungie to build X-Box.

Part of the reason that they were willing to pay so much was because they have a lot of international money that they couldn't easily bring back into the US. Popcap is in the US so they don't fall under the same issue.

Good point which I should have qualified.

Still excluding the tax savings they still overpaid by all accounts, have a long history of wildly good and bad acquisitions and need to give wp7 every advantage they can. There's no way you can rule Microsoft out at this point they've got to be one of the front runners.

They already seem to have a good WP7 relationship (Bejeweled Live is actually written by them, as opposed to EA Mobile [moderately rare for small platforms], and PvZ just came out last week). Make of that what you will.

Disney?

Interesting idea, but they've picked up Playdom already and if you listen to their analyst calls you'll hear that the investment community isn't sold on them owning game/tech assets vs. licensing them.

Valve could afford to buy the Vatican, and that was before they shipped a single game.

Half-Life Catacombs. Portal to Purgatory.

Sistine Chapplaquiddick - Some sort of first person drunk angel flight sim

No, I don't think so. The value of just the artwork alone would eclipse Valve's value.

But remember that assets are only half the balance sheet...

I worked with Jason Kapalka of PopCap in a previous life. He's a great guy and really passionate about what he does - I'm really glad to see it work out for him (and his colleagues, who are presumably similarly great).

Perhaps Yahoo?

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