EA buys 20% of UbiSoft

[mikezilla]

actually Brothers in Arms is owned by Gearbox.

[KungFuSquirrel]

So that means that, in the event of a full hostile takeover by EA, Gearbox could pull BiA from the EA machine and pitch it out to whoever else wanted it?

I was hoping that, if it came to it, that'd be the case. I've heard enough hints of the horrors of Nightfire to really feel sorry for you guys if you got pulled in under them again.

[Fletch]

Oooh Ooooh! Publish with Vivendi Universal! I hear they treat developers awesomely.

[Duff-e]

if you ever get locked in your office by your new overlords, just send out the call and we'll come break you out. we might even burn things

hell i dont even need a good reason to burn shit

[kleinluka]

Well for now let's just hope it doesn't come to this. And I imagine something like this wouldn't be a matter of a month or two.... more like years..

[st0lve]

Best of luck to UBI and klein :wink:

[Thrik]

http://yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCo ... 746_newsml

[kleinluka]

In other news:

http://sports.ign.com/articles/574/5745 ... ?fromint=1

MUahahaha.

Anyways, we're not going down without a fight

*hangs up combine "resist" poster in the office*

[st0lve]

Fucking Hitler company.

The bosses at EA sit around and scream "I WANT THE WORLD, FOR ME AND ONLY ME!!!111, but the license now!!!!"

[kleinluka]

it's a business, what do you expect..

[Lurker]

Pretty much sums it up.

Its amazing how much "bad" press EA is getting now-a-days though, after the over-worked employee fiasco, the NFL exclusivity deal (which seems, IMO, to have brought EA some bad press) and then this takeover has clearly caused some insecurity from people. Lets just hope it doesn't go further.

Mike, if I remember correctly, Gearbox is under a 10-year deal to develop games for the Brothers in Arms series, if Ubisoft was eventually taken over by EA, would you guys have the option to drop out of the deal or would you be binded in a contract with EA?

[mikezilla]

thats not entirely accurate

ubisoft has the option to publish bia games for ten years.

i'm not at liberty to discuss any of the details further but this ea thing doesn't really affect us.

[Izuno]

but this ea thing doesn't really affect us.

good to hear, and not surprising. When a one company makes this kind of move to acquire a significant, but not controlling, share in another company they don't get control over already existing projects.

I know the feeling is sort of "One publisher to rule them all" right now, but there never really is this kind of consolidation unless there are intrinsic market forces at work. Microsoft became a dominant player in the PC desktop OS market not just because of their aggressive business strategies, but also by the simple fact that it's much easier for consumers and businesses to use one standard operating system that pretty much everyone else uses.

For video games, there is no comparable benefit to having all games be published by one corporation.

[Schmung]

True, but games are expensive and EAs giganto cash-sack is a hard thing to resist. If theres anything major to be siad in Steams favour, it is at least effective as provding a cheaper means of distribution for small time devs.

[kleinluka]

well for ubisoft that doesnt apply since we publish our games on our own.