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It's official now:Reuters wrote:NEW YORK (Reuters) Electronic Arts Inc , the video game publisher, is buying PopCap Games in a deal worth up to $1.3 billion as it tries to ramp up its social and casual games portfolio and better compete with Zynga Inc.

EA is investing more in digital content as customers are buying fewer games on discs to play on consoles. Video game companies are now offering users options to play free or lowpriced games on mobile devices, PCs and Facebook. EA's Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown said "This gives us a much stronger presence in social network games."

Shares fell following the announcement as investors balked at EA's strategy of shifting toward digital games, which make less money than the packaged games it is best known for, such as "Madden NFL," said Brean Murray analyst Todd Mitchell. Mitchell added that EA, which acquired socialgames maker Playfish in 2009 for a deal worth up to $400 million, has also been on a buying spree. "It seems to me they've been buying a lot of assets lately and paying a pretty high price for a lot of them," Mitchell said.

PopCap, which is based in Seattle, has been profitable for 10 years since its founding. It generated $100 million in revenue in 2010. said Tuesday that it will buy PopCap Games for at least $750 million in a bid to snag a larger piece of the rapidly growing market for games on cell phones and social networks. EA plans to offer PopCap employees $50 million more during the next four years in order to entice them to stay, too. If all the payouts are made, the acquisition would be EA's largest to date.

PopCap will be latest addition to EA's digital business, which includes games on Facebook, the iPhone and other gadgets, as well as downloadable addon content for games sold on discs. EA is building up this side of its business as consumers increasingly play games on smartphones, tablet computers and Facebook, and grow less interested in expensive, packaged video games. EA CEO John Riccitiello said in an interview that about a quarter of video games are now played on mobile devices and social networks a figure he expects to climb to 50 percent in the next five years. "PopCap is a leader on all of those platforms," Riccitiello said. EA's other recent purchases in the digital space include PlayFish, a maker of social network games, for which it paid $275 million in 2009 and Chillingo, the publisher but not creator of "Angry Birds" and other mobile games, for about $20 million last October. Until now, the largest of these types of deals was Jamdat Mobile Inc., which EA bought for $684 million in 2006.

Seattlebased PopCap was founded in 2000 and began offering downloadable PC games that people could try before buying in 2001, the first of which was "Bejeweled Deluxe." The company went on to release dozens of games for all sorts of platforms, including consoles like Sony Corp.'s PlayStation3, cell phones, Apple Inc.'s iPad and Facebook. Today, PopCap has 500 employees, and it doesn't expect any staff changes due to the acquisition. Both companies said the PopCap brand name will live on under EA's ownership.

From at least some points of view ME2 and DA2 were just steps down a spiral for Bioware that started long before EA came along. Many, if not most, hold up BG2 as the high point for BioWare, and we're talking about a 10yearold game. So how much EA "did with" ME2 and DA2 is kind of up in the air.

Not to mention, if budgets are skyrocketing for all games, how much is it getting out of hand for the development of 50hour RPGs?

I'm just saying, PopCap is no stranger to milking franchises. I don't think you're going to see much difference. DICE and BioWare have had pretty much all the time they want to develop games, and I don't think you can directly blame their innovation (or lack thereof) on EA.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

I should have been more specific, I was referring to the DLC and format of those games, not about the games themselves. I guess it's open to discussion, but Mass Effect 2, IMO, isn't even near complete without the DLC, the base game is terribly short. Dragon Age 1 was OK as the base game was pretty long, but Dragon Age 2 is quickly going into the "chop half the game off and sell it as DLC" fashion. Battlefield Play4Free is a joke, you have to spend tons of money to remain competitive (good thing it seemingly hasn't caught on much).

Regarding their track record of support. name me one game that EA properly provided aftersales support/patches and for each one, I'll name you ten that they haven't. Of course, this will bring up the point that EA isn't even the worst offender on that angle, but they're still pretty bad.

As for DICE specifically, maybe now they have all the time they want. with BF3. Bad Company 2 still contains some broken behavior which will never be fixed, mainly the terrible lag/hitboxes and the broken helicopter controls. BF3 marketing managed to divert all attention from the fact that BC2 will never ever be updated again. Disclaimer: I'm also looking forward for BF3.

Back in the day I was in a betatest team for a BF2 patch (1.4 or 1.5, can't recall exactly). The test team found all the major issues and tons of smaller ones. When it came the time to actually make the patch, EA basically told the DICE support team (which wasn't even the main team, given that the main team was already doing something else) that they had a very short timeframe, IIRC something like 2 weeks, to fix stuff, and then the patch was out, period, full stop. Result: they fixed what little they could, which wasn't much. That was the day when I realized how things actually work.

Look, I don't just want to be a negative creep regarding this. In fact, I'd love to be proven wrong. But we're talking about EA, not Valve or Blizzard.

There is a fixed amount of intelligence on the planet, and the population keeps growing :(

morphine, I'm not entirely sure that any PopCap game in the history of ever got a patch. Well, I take that back. Bejeweled Blitz for iOS gets a patch every time Facebook around with authentication. If you can find a patch for a PC/Mac game in this support site you probably win a prize. In fact, search for the term patch or update and find a spectacular lack of bugs.

PopCap isn't the poster child of aftersales support that you think it is. Part of that is because the games are simple and don't need it, but there are plenty of complaints on the internet about Bejeweled 3 bugs (mostly relating to badges) that still exist, and this is a game that came out almost a year ago. They haven't proven themselves to be worth worrying about. They never support games after release.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

derFunkenstein wrote:PopCap isn't the poster child of aftersales support that you think it is.

Nowhere did I imply that Or if I did, apologies for not being clear.

Now that Popcap is under EA's wing, here are my fears:

Endless sequels instead of original content (granted, Popcap's Blitz sequence isn't "good behavior")