EA Buys 'Angry Birds' Publisher Chillingo For $20 Million, Doesn't Get 'Angry Birds'

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

Alexia Tsotsis works for TechCrunch as a writer. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Media industry. After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles... → Learn More


According to Reuters, Electronic Arts just bought Angry Birds publishers Chillingo for $20 million in cash.

Apparently early reports caused some confusion as to who actually owned Angry Birds and the difference between developer Rovio and publisher Chillingo. To clarify, Angry Birds developer Rovio Mobile has just tweeted the above, “We have not sold out. We have not sold to EA. We are Rovio. We own Angry Birds.”

Going by the above and the reported price, the Angry Birds franchise is not part of today’s sale. From Rovio Mobile; “We own all rights, Chillingo is just a publisher.”

Aside from recently debuting for free on the Android, the Angry Birds franchise has expanded into toys and games and has a rumored movie in the works.

Chillingo’s second most notable game after Angry Birds is something called Cut the Rope, also from a third party developer, ZeptoLab.

EA most recently acquired another social gaming company, Playfish, for $300 million in cash and $100 million in earnout.

Update: Angry Birds “Mighty Eagle” Peter Vesterbacka tells TechCrunch,

“We’re remaining an independent company and are continuing full speed ahead. This sale has no impact on us, as Chillingo is just a publisher of the iPhone and iPad games, and that’s it.”

Company: Rovio Mobile
Website: rovio.com
Funding: $42M

Rovio is one of Europe’s leading independent developers of wireless games with an ever-growing portfolio of award-winning titles spanning many genres from casual to core next-gen console IP. Their studio has developed games for some of the biggest names in the mobile space, including Electronic Arts, Nokia, Vivendi, Namco Bandai and Mr. Goodliving/Real Networks. The seeds of Rovio were sown in 2003 when Helsinki University of Technology students Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen, and Kim Dikert participated in a mobile game...

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Company: Chillingo
Website: chillingo.com
Launch Date: 2005

A Games publisher who specialises in digital distribution across multiple platforms. Chillingo has published games for iPhone and iPod touch, iPad, Wii, PSP Mini and Xbox arcade. Innovate. Publish. Play.

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Company: Electronic Arts
Website: ea.com
Launch Date: 1982
IPO: NASDAQ:ERTS

Electronic Arts is an American developer and publisher of computer and video games. They own well known game studios such as Bioware, Mythic, and Maxis games and have developed titles from the Need for Speed series to Crysis.

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