Remember when Valve’s Gabe Newell talked about allowing his studio to “disintegrate” rather than be sold? How, “it’s way more likely we would head in that direction than say, ‘Let’s find some giant company that wants to cash us out and wait two or three years to have our employment agreements terminate”?
He wasn’t just shooting from the hip though. Big-time publishers are always looking to scoop up new studios and add them to their repertoire of intellectual properties. Microsoft did it with Rare, Activision did it with Infinity Ward and so on and so forth.
Reportedly, EA held a discussion with Valve to purchase the company for upwards of $1 billion, according to two people who “had knowledge of the discussions”.
With the success of Steam and the release of Big Picture, Valve’s stock has shot up considerably. It makes sense that a big publisher would like to own them.
According to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter though, Valve would currently be worth upwards of $2.5 billion. Either way, getting them to play ball won’t be easy.
Source: New York Times via Develop-Online