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Comment by m0nastic | Hacker News Reader

This part seemed especially troubling:

"But PopCap’s founders worried about the company’s reputation after hearing rumors of the company’s rescinding share awards and fierce internal competition, said two people with first-hand knowledge of the situation. Instead, PopCap agreed to a rival offer from Electronic Arts, worth $750 million in cash and stock and the potential of an additional $550 million if certain earnings goals were met."

You agree to be acquired for less money by EA because of the culture of Zynga? EA. Arguably the worst-regarded place for game developers to work.

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I have 3 friends who have worked for EA recently, in different offices in different states. They all agree that things are noticeably better since the EA wife lawsuit. It's not perfect, but it's not the constant death marches it used to be. I'd say Zygna has handily surpassed EA in the horrible reputation department.

Irony of ironies, did you know the author of the ea spouse blog also worked for zygna.

From her LinkedIn profile it looks like she is no longer there.

I'm an EA spouse. The culture depends very strongly on the particular studio. It's mainly the old studios like Redwood Shores and Tiburon that have the really bad reputations, though they have gotten a bit better. I'd say it's partly the lawsuit, but also partly Riccitiello's effort to create a healthier culture.

EA also has some history of allowing semi-independence of studios they buy out if they have enough clout and fight for it. Maxis managed to even stay in a physically different location, partly to maintain cultural independence, and partly because Will Wright didn't want to commute to Redwood City. Admittedly, being Will Wright is sort of an exceptional case when it comes to negotiating clout.

Bioware appears to be an example of that. They have changed a lot their business strategy (lots of DLC now) but their culture seems to remain the same.

The essence of EA's management style is that they're content to leave studios on their own, so long as the studio is consistently laying golden eggs. When that studio experiences a significant failure (when, not if) EA corporate has no qualms about slicing open the goose to find out what went wrong.

They're better in this regard than they once were, because they have some level of restraint now, but the creative hit-or-bomb nature of the video game business means that eventually they eventually feel compelled to exert control over all of their acquisitions. Wright had a large degree of autonomy for a long time because he made staggeringly massive amounts of money for EA with The Sims, but it didn't protect him from being pushed out when Spore turned out to be an epic flop.

Well, EA was offering up to $1.3B with the incentives. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if Zynga made an extremely stock-heavy offer, which is riskier than cash and currently-publicly-traded EA stock

The article says it was all cash

In July, Zynga lost a bid for PopCap, a mobile game company. Zynga offered $950 million in cash.

The article spells out the opposite:

>"In July, Zynga lost a bid for PopCap, a mobile game company. Zynga offered $950 million in cash."

>"PopCap agreed to a rival offer from Electronic Arts, worth $750 million in cash and stock and the potential of an additional $550 million if certain earnings goals were met."

$750m cash + $550m in public company stock could easily be considered more than $950m cash.

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