In a surprising twist, Electronic Arts is now set to acquire Codemasters.
Last month, news came out that Take-Two Interactive had proposed an offer to purchase the hugely successful racing game specialists. If it all went through, the 2K Sports publisher would buy out Codies for roughly $973 million in cash and shares.
However, it seems the deal spurred on other publishers. EA has entered the race, and looks set to win Codemasters with an offer of $1.2 billion. The deal is expected to be completed in early 2021.
Codemasters chairman Gerhard Florin comments that EA and his company "have a shared ambition to lead the video game racing category". When you consider the combined racing IP that this deal would bring together, that ambition will certainly be realised. The likes of DIRT, GRID, and Project CARS — not to mention officially licensed titles like F1 and WRC — will join Need for Speed, Burnout, and Real Racing.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson is very positive about this buyout: "Our industry is growing, the racing category is growing, and together we will be positioned to lead in a new era of racing entertainment," he says.
It seems this is all pretty much set in stone, but it remains to be seen if Take-Two will fight for this acquisition — or indeed, if any other publishers will express interest. From where we're sitting, this seems like a done deal, though. Looks like Codemasters will be under the EA umbrella from next year onward.
[source gamesindustry.biz]
Comments 61
Not that i am into a lot of these codemasters games, but going to either EA or Take Two sounds like they are going to microtransaction hell to me.
RIP Codemasters games. Hello junkware filled with MTs to fill the shareholder wallets
@PaperAlien @TheAdza Dirt 5 already had a few microtransactions on offer before this acquisition was a thing.
I've been a fan since they made the critically panned Rise of the Argonauts and the lovely Overlord.
Just wonder why the current CEO of EA thinks that micro transactions and the BS gaming practice as his best vision ?
Soneone have to fire that CEO and replace with new CEO that understand how to please gamers with right gaming policy.
Take Two, EA... whoever wins, we lose.
On that note, remember when Codies made things other than racing games?
@Orpheus79V like what?
Isnt it a bit worrying that they have similar competing franchises already?
@Orpheus79V I 'member
What's Microsoft's counter offer?
@JJ2 Yeah. Don't they have need for speed games? Seems weird they want more racing games.
I'm even surprised these guys are getting bought. Don't think their games sell that amazing.
Oh well. They had a great run over the decades. RIP Codemasters.
@TheAdza they will probably bring in some kind of fut function.
Fifa has the fut fifa ultimate team
F1 Fia probably will be called f1ut or f1at.
The ps1 and 2 versions of f1 ea racing back in the day were really bad.
On rush was good compared ti the f1 ea games.
@LiamCroft as did F1 2020 with pit coins.
TBH I don't want either company touching Codemasters!
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So Dirt 5 coming to Game Pass then?
I want to say I hope EA don't get this but I remember the early 2000 F1 games being made by EA actually being quite good. Despite their reputation, EA do sometimes do good things. Microtransactions excluded.
@Mince Sar Wars : Squadrons doesn't have any microtransactions... yet. I must admit I thought they would implement them sooner, but I was wrong.
I'm still expecting them to do something shady with the game, but maybe the rumors of Disney slapping EA hard in the ass with the Battlefront 2 debacle were true in the end, because since then we got good updates for BF2, Jedi Fallen Order and Squadrons.
So yeah, I'm not sure we can give the credit to EA for their Star Wars games, especially when we see how their other games turn out.
@tanaka2687 i remember liking F1 Career Challenge alot back in the day. However as you pointed out that was before microtransactions and surprise mechanics.
Honestly Sony or another company needs to make an offer. I say Sony because since the Driveclub devs fell and Motorstorm is no more we only have Gran Turismo as a racing exclusive.
@Olmaz star wars squadrons was a complete game according to EA and would receive no free dlc or maps. Then proceeded to add dlc and maps
@tanaka2687 I know I experience the same thing a lot (above 40 yo now...), but you do realise that the early 2000s were... 20 years ago!
EA has changed a lot since then...
@Dr-M they were pretty prolific back in the C64 days, putting out the Dizzy games among others. They always released games from a wide range of genres, up until about 7 years ago when they decided to only put out racing games.
Another company ruined
RIP codies. RIP.
Absolute crying shame imo. Ive had alot of fun with Codemasters games throughout the generations and selling up to dreadful EA will halt my purchases of any games in the Dirt and F1 series. Fully expect MT riddled games in the future. Gutted.
@Orpheus79V I played a lot of the Dizzy games in early 90s
@Dr-M
Dizzy!
@LiamCroft
And i own the game on Xbox and i havent used the MTXs
@Orpheus79V thank you for replying and I knew I could do a quick search but I wanted your personal experience with their past games.
RIP Codemasters.
@Dr-M operation flashpoint games, LMA manager for example
@hoffa007 played through Flashpoint with a few friends back in the day. Awsome game to play with a crew.
One word, NNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
F1 games ruined then
RIP Codemasters Well saying that thank God Microsoft didn't buy them because that would have been even worse for gamers
Burnout?
I'm pretty sure EA have forgotten they own that franchise. We may see Takedown or Revenge remastered in another 6 years or so.
That seems way overpriced to me!
To be fare to Codies they left a stonker of a game in Formula 1 2020 that will keep me happy for years and years same with Dirt 4 and Dirt Rally............E.A. F1 games are dreadful and with Codies acquiring the rally license i'll pass on anything E.A. makes..................I wonder if the lads from Codies and Project Cars make another Company or are they now Electronic Arts Employees.
@hoffa007 Underrated game Flashpoint and LMA was brill.
@naruball @Orpheus79V Yeah, I was just thinking that. I mostly think of Codemasters for non-racing games. I'm not sure when they became a one trick pony, though I'm pretty sure that's when they apparently became so cash strapped they're selling out to EA or 2K. Overlord was one of the most fun experiences around (even if it ran like dog poo on PS3 and was the catalyst for me buying an X360 at all!)
@NEStalgia Unfortunately, those other games they made didn't sell well, so their hands were pretty much tied.
What kills me about this is I see EA just lumbering them with sodding Need For Speed at somepoint. I've never known a franchise be peddled so much without improvement.
EA already had a superb UK based racing game studio, in fact they had a couple and they destroyed one i.e Criterion and almost the other in Slightly Mad.
What they will end up doing to Codemasters I do not know. Though I suspect some sort of Ultimate Team will end up in Formula One games in a couple of years.
@naruball Things like Perimeter may not have sold well (fantastic game), but Operation Flashpoint and Overlord were solid enough franchises. They may not have sold 8m copies for an empty box of a broken product like CDPR's "masterpiece" but relative for their modest budgets they did ok. They seemed to get stuck in the rut of chasing the big money with whatever sells best and ended up boxing themselves into a single genre studio.
It's an ugly situation for racing fans, though. Now EA gets all the racing games plus their own NFS (which they seem to not know what to do with it), meaning the options for racing boil down, basically, to EA's many series to milk, Microsoft's Forza series, and Sony's GT series. And GT's don't come around too often. This feels like a move not so much to acquire more brands and capture more market so much as it's about squelching competition. That makes them the only major player in racing other than the big platform holders. Like with sports games.
It also unfortunately means Overlord goes to die in a mobile game, and Flashpoint is DOA behind Battlefield.
Yet....as bad as EA is....I still feel like they care about actual quality gameplay more than 2K and Activision these days.
Edit: I forgot Ubisoft's The Crew series, which has all the terrible physics of Watch Dogs driving, but at least it's a flashy alternative. And I'm not even a big racing fan!
Take-two & EA are equally bad on the mtx-live service annual release front as far as Codemasters current catalogue goes. Daresay there'll be some rather nervous/upset dev teams too. :-/
About the only positive was had it been M$,they would've likely gone exclusive too. Knowing EA,they'll probably dust off Dizzy & Micro Machines for mobile freemium games too!
@Dr-M
1986 Super Robin Hood Platform Amiga, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, C64, Atari ST, Amiga, NES [1]
1986 BMX Simulator Racing Amiga, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, C64, MSX, ZX Spectrum [2]
1987 Ghost Hunters Action, platformer Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum [3]
1987 Grand Prix Simulator Racing Amstrad CPC, C64, ZX Spectrum [4]
1987 Dizzy – The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure Adventure C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum [5]
1987 Professional Ski Simulator Sports Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, C64 Atari ST, Amiga [6]
1987 3D Starfighter Action / Shooter Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum [7]
1987 ATV Simulator Sports simulation ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad CPC [8]
1988 Jet Bike Simulator Sports simulation ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Amiga [9]
1988 Fruit Machine Simulator Gambling simulation ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Amiga [10]
1988 The Race Against Time ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad CPC [11]
1988 Pro BMX Simulator Sports simulation ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad CPC [12]
1988 Advanced Pinball Simulator Pinball Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, C64 [13]
1988 Treasure Island Dizzy Adventure Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, C64, Enterprise 64/128, Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, NES, CD32 [14]
1989 Championship Jet Ski Simulator Sports simulation Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, C64, Atari ST, Amiga [9]
1989 4 Soccer Simulators Sports Amstrad CPC, C64, ZX Spectrum [15]
1989 BMX Simulator 2 Sports simulation ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad CPC [16]
1989 Fast Food Maze Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, C64, Enterprise 64/128, Atari ST, Amiga, MS-DOS [17]
1989 Grand Prix Simulator II Racing Amstrad CPC, C64, ZX Spectrum [18]
1989 Operation Gunship Action Amstrad CPC, C64, ZX Spectrum [19]
1989 MiG-29: Soviet Fighter Action, Shoot 'em up Amstrad CPC, C64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Atari ST, NES
1989 Fantasy World Dizzy Adventure Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, C64, Enterprise 64/128, Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS [20]
1989 750cc Grand Prix Racing ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC
Straight from Wikipedia and that's just the 1980s
I got no words... 2020 is hell.
@JJ2 Buy the competition in order to kill it? Look at what happened to Rare as the years went on. 🤷🏾♂️
@themcnoisy Thank you.
Living in a different part of the world we only had the Atari then Nintendo and SEGA consoles. before Sony joined in, so all of this is new to me and I have only known Codemasters through their recent games.
@Dr-M cool M. If you like a bit of retro gaming Dizzy is still pretty cool. If you like football LMA Manager was good too.
From 2010 codemasters clearly changed tact internally and other than Overlord I can't think of any other genre they have developed other than Driving games.
@Robocod I doubt MS or Sony were ever interested, given they already have equally powerful racing franchises. 2K wanted in on the game and I assume EA's game is mostly to keep Codemaster's NFS competition off the market from being at 2k or another big rival, or maybe snag a racing franchise that hasn't been left to languish as much as NFS.
Codemasters for me will always remind me of buying budget games for my C64 in WH Smith, back in the 80s. Thinking on, EA will always remind me of EA Hockey, Desert Strike and Road Rash on the Megadrive, those were the days.
The Oliver Twins are releasing Wonderful Dizzy this month, so thats something!
Codies is a solid studio, but those prices are insane. Am I missing something? They're a studio that seem to make a profit, but not a huge one, and they've been that way for ages. Suddenly they're worth over a billion dollars?! I would have thought one-tenth of that price was more appropriate. Insomniac - a very successful studio that made over a billion dollars on their Spiderman game - recently sold for about 300 million. Does EA need a tax deduction or something?
@themcnoisy I will definitely try to check it out, evenI might try Overloard if I can buy it frim the PS store.
Thank you.
1.2 billion for Codemasters seems insane to me.
@LiterallyDoNotCarethis is why they want them...to save the need for speed franchise...if any studio is good enough to save that franchise and get it back on track its the codies...
@NEStalgia "Overlord were solid enough franchises. They may not have sold 8m copies for an empty box of a broken product like CDPR's "masterpiece" but relative for their modest budgets they did ok"
Do we have any evidence that supports this? I'd really like to know for sure.
As long as someone makes a burnout paradise 2 I'd be happy. There is enough straight forward simulations about.
Really sucks that EA is buying Codemasters.
@naruball I don't have references on hand, but as I recall the first one did well enough - the second one massively increased the budget but released with little fanfare and did ok, the spinoffs weren't Codemasters developed, and the last one was massively screwed up and the sales weren't there as a result.
It's one of those EA-like decision making processes that says "we colossally screwed up our game, everyone found out, so nobody bought it - lets cancel the series!"
Hey, it's a perfect fit after all!!
@Bad-MuthaAdebisi with this setup there are no winners.
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