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EA Takeover Moves and Countermoves
Details have emerged regarding several EA takeover related stories. The long running dispute with Digital Illusions may be coming to an end as EA has waived the requirement to own majority shares in the company. They still plan to purchase as many shares of the company as possible. Ubisoft announced that they have a defense planned against a hostile takeover bid from EA, should it arise. No mention of what this plan is, of course. In reaction to the recent press coverage of their move to purchase Ubi stock, EA has announced that their purchase was not hostile, and that they'd spoken often with Ubi representatives. From the article: "Florin reiterated that Electronic Arts was not asking for a seat on Ubisoft's board. 'We had the opportunity to buy a 20 percent stake in Ubisoft and we haven't asked for anything... That's not hostile. In our industry, one doesn't make hostile moves because our value lies with people,' he added."
If EA is so eager to buy these companies maybe the current shareholders ought to be asking their boards what value EA sees that they haven't been able to realize.
That line is hilarious coming from the company that has been outed as treating its coders like slaves.
I think EA is just doing this to keep people guessing and to put their competitors on the defensive.
For basically no cost to EA (they have tons of cash in the bank anyway) they managed to make Ubi (a competitor) hold several emergency board meetings and probably tied up all of senior management for several weeks. Instead of concentrating on making their products, they have to respond to press and government inquiries and come up with a defense strategy.
Furthermore, they got Vivendi involved and probably caused at least some distraction in the management of every other medium-sized publisher. _And_ they diverted some attention from the difficulties EA is having acquiring Dice.
I don't think they really care if they acquire Ubi or not. If it looks doable in a couple months, there's some value there and they'll go ahead. If not, then they probably got a nice short-term return on an investment of some of their spare cash.
He means that EA doesn't want to piss off the great senior talent at Ubisoft. The game industry as a whole is talent-centric, just like the movie industry. There are lots of peons on the bottom that get abused like crazy, but there are also a number of key talents in production, concept, art design, and maybe even programming that determine whether a company has any value.
In response to a hostile takeover, it's likely that many of these people would leave. Then the taken over corporation is just a worthless and empty shell and all the money spent buying into it did nothing but destroy a brand and earn the runaway talent a bunch of news for their next competing project.
You know what bothers me about hearing this these days in regards to EA?
I heard this same thing in the early 90's from coders who used to work for EA back in the 80's but left to start their own companies.
Many of EA's great early works of classic gaming history were coded by people who have long since left. I can't remember WHO said it, but I believe (though I may be wrong) it was either someone from the Bard's Tale (Interplay) or Starflight (Binary Systems) development teams that said something to the effect "EA likes to find stary eyed young programmers with big dreams of success and lure them into slavery with empty promises." (My parahprase since it's been so long.)
I wish I knew who said it and what exactly they said but since it was in a print magazine long ago I haven't been able to find reference to it now days.
Apparently this isn't new for EA. If I remember someone in the 90's saying it about EA from when they worked there in the 80's, I wouldn't have any reason to believe they are any better today.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.