EA Plans to Acquire Respawn, Announces Upcoming Titanfall Game

According to Electronic Arts, they plan to acquire the studio behind the Titalfall franchise, Respawn Entertainment. EA made this announcement in a press release, in which they also announced the active development of a new Titanfall game.

Electronic Arts will be paying $151 million initially and $164 million in long-term equity for Respawn. Considering there are only 160 members of Respawn Entertainment, that is essentially 1 million dollars a person - in long-term equity alone, anyway.

Vince Zampella, CEO of Respawn Entertainment, remarked on the acquisition in a letter posted to Respawn's website.

While it wasn't necessary, going with EA made a lot of sense. With Titanfall and Star Wars, EA has been a great development partner that supports us and doesn't interfere with our process for making games or studio culture. EA will provide us with more resources, access to new technologies, and expertise that we can tap into to that will help us make better games, and Respawn will retain the same creative freedom and culture weve always had. We've been talking closely with the leadership at EA and we share their values and vision for the future of being a developer-focused company that puts the players first.

Founded in 2010 by previous members of Infinity Ward, Respawn has seen immense success with Titanfall 1 as a launch game for the Xbox One, and even more success with Titanfall 2. Both games have been published by EA. While Zampella reassures fans that this will not change how they make games, many express concern for the direction of the games (microtransactions?) as well as the life of the studio. We saw what happened to Visceral after all.