EA, known for systematically killing almost every notable and major studio it owns, and desecrating their corpses by ruining the franchises those studios used to be known for, has decided to set its sights on another noteworthy developer- Respawn Entertainment, the excellent folks who brought us Titanfall and Titanfall 2. EA has made the purchase for $435 million.
In an interview with GamesBeat, Vince Zampella, CEO and cofounder of Respawn, sounded enthusiastic about the prospect of the acquisition. “We have worked together a long time from the inception of the studio. [An acquisition] has come up from time to time. The question was, where we are in the industry, how do we take the next step in making bigger, better games. We see the need for bigger resources to make bigger games.”
“We want to have the best games. We have a good relationship,” EA executive vice president Patrick Soderlund said. “The creative freedom is still here: DICE, BioWare, our studios have creative freedom and creative integrity. That’s what gets those studios to make great games.”
The problem is that EA historically kills studios- Criterion, Maxis, Bullfrog, Visceral, Bioware Montreal, Black Box, Westwood, Origin, Pandemic, and this is just off the top of my head, I haven’t even bothered to think about this yet. However, Zampella was quick to soothe fans with a reassuring message.
“For fans, my message is we are still Respawn and we are going to make things better,” Zampella said. “It doesn’t change the future of Titanfall. Only positives come from it, like more resources.”
We’ll see how this goes, but I don’t like this one bit, I don’t like this at all. All I can hope is that Respawn is left alone, and Zampella gets to do what he wants, and gets to make the games he wants, with minimal interference by EA. As of right now, Respawn is working on a Star Wars game, and presumably there will be a Titanfall 3 as well.