Electronic Arts is laying off staffers at its Montreal office in another round of job cuts. The news comes less than two weeks after CEO John Riccitiello resigned, citing the company’s financial underperformance. → Read More
Electronic Arts’ SimCity was easily the most anticipated game of the season, but its launch was an unmitigated disaster because the DRM solution Electronic Arts and Maxis dreamt up means users have to always be online if they want to play. Sadly, EA’s servers weren’t up to the task and most players were either unable to connect or got kicked out of the game after a while. Today… → Read More
Electronic Arts has just reported lower-than-expected third-quarter fiscal year 2013 earnings today, missing on revenue but just squeaking out a win on EPS. Revenue came in at $1.18 billion for the quarter, down from $1.6 billion in the same quarter last year, while non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.57. Non-GAAP net income was $176 million from the quarter, down from $334 million in Q3 2011. → Read More
Electronic Arts continues to beef up its cloud-based gaming offerings. Today it was announced that it is buying ESN, developers of the Planet web-based games framework, for an undisclosed sum. The two companies had already been working together, namely on Battlelog, an online social-web component for EA’s Battlefield 3. The news was announced on ESN’s blog. → Read More
Pride got high tech this weekend as thousands of employees from Google, Facebook, Electronic Arts, Zynga, and more celebrated to support equal rights for everyone. Parades in San Francisco and New York saw search engine, social network, and game developer logos decked out in rainbows as engineers danced in the streets.
Here’s a look at our favorite photos of tech companies representing at… → Read More
EA’s big shift toward treating games as services instead of packaged goods is going to mean restructuring this year.
Chief executive John Riccitiello said in today’s earnings call that there will be some layoffs as the company increases production of online, mobile, and social games. While EA beat earnings estimates for the quarter ending in March, its shares fell in after-hours trading by as… → Read More
So, there’s been some hubbub around Electronic Arts over the last few days, as the company ramps up for the release of its third quarter earnings on February 1st. Yesterday, EA’s stock closed at $17.54 per share, which, in context, meant that the gaming goliath’s stock was down 30 percent since hitting its 52-week high in early November. This drop was mostly due to the collective shock relating to… → Read More
Electronic Arts (EA) has acquired Firemint, a privately held mobile development studio based in Melbourne, Australia. Firemint is the 60-people strong company behind games like Flight Control (see video below) and Real Racing.
EA says the deal is not material to the company, overall. Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close within four weeks, were not disclosed. → Read More
My friends over at the WSJ have been knocking it out of the park lately, reporting last night that social gaming phenomenon Zynga is raising a new $250 million round of funding that values the company at between $7 – $9 billion according to, eh hem, sources.
Then today Bloomberg piggybacked on the news, naming names in terms of players in the talks, including Fidelity investments and T.Rowe Price… → Read More
We haven’t heard much from PlayFirst since we covered the San Francisco-based casual gaming startup’s last funding round back in December 2007, but that doesn’t mean things aren’t moving for the venture-backed company.
Earlier this year, the startup inked a major deal with Big Fish Games and today it has announced that social game industry executive Mitali Pattnaik has joined PlayFirst as General… → Read More
After lengthy negotiations, Electronic Arts closed it’s anticipated acquisition of social gaming startup Playfish for $275 million in cash. An additional $25 million in stock will be set aside for retaining the top talent at the startup, and another $100 million in earnouts are part of the deal as well if the business hits certain milestones. So the total value of the deal could amount to as… → Read More
Looks like The Sims 3 has leaked, several days before its official release date. Big surprise, right? Like these things don’t happen all the time. It can be found where you usually find these things. → Read More
Layoffs in the tech sector are accelerating. It took exactly three weeks for tech layoffs to surge to 300,000, according to our Layoff Tracker. Since late January, when the tracker hit 200,000 layoffs, another 100,000 job eliminations have been announced or completed. In contrast, it took five weeks for layoffs in the tech industry to hit the 200,000 mark, and four months for layoffs to hit… → Read More
If you’re a real sk8er you are going to buy these sneakers from Etnies and EA. This might make sense. Buy the game, play the game, go out and do it for real. Eventually you’ll realize you suck and go back to the game. → Read More
Bad news for Electronic Arts today, with word that the composer of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) fight song is suing the publisher for copyright infringement. The suit, which alleges that EA used the song “Win With the Rebels,” asks for $150,000 per violation. That totals to $1,500,000 since the suit claims the song can be heard on 10 EA games. The games are NCAA Football… → Read More
And now Electronic Arts has a class action lawsuit on its hands. Hell hath no fury like Spore fans scorned. The publisher is accused of violating two laws relating to the game’s DRM. The suit claims that EA installs SecuROM without notifying consumers. Then the suit lists SecuROM’s crimes, including the fact that it’s damn near impossible to uninstall. It also claims that SecuROM… → Read More
In light of thousands upon thousands of irate DRM-hating gamers, Electronic Arts has announced that it’ll be issuing a patch to the game that’ll allow people to de-authorize certain computers. Currently, the game is only able to be activated on up to three machines. If you replace one of those machines, you’ll have to call up EA, proof of purchase at hand, and plead your case to be able to… → Read More
Electronic Arts has “moved on,” and is no longer interested in buying Take Two Interactive, the publisher of, among of games, Grand Theft Auto IV. EA made it official sometime Sunday evening, ending the months-long back-and-forth between the two companies. Ask any gamer, and they’d tell you Electronic Arts was simply looking to buy the Grand Theft Auto brand, which, at least in the U.S. → Read More
If we can learn anything from the troubled launch of Spore, a videogame many people have been looking forward to for years, it is that binding products with digital rights management (DRM) restrictions hurts more than it helps. Spore, designed by Sims creator Will Wright, went on sale a week ago. It is expected to sell 2 million copies in September alone, and is currently the No. 3 best-selling… → Read More
Electronic Arts sure knows how to annoy people, especially unsuspecting British motorists. The publishing giant staged one of those “free gas” giveaways at the weekend in London to promote Mercenaries 2. (Specifically, EA was handing out free gas cards worth £40.) Needless to say, people freaked out, traffic became a mess, and a politician now wants an apology, calling the stunt… → Read More
Yesterday, one day after taking down Scrabuluos in the U.S. and Canada in response to a lawsuit from Hasbro, the Indian brothers behind Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, released a brand new crossword-like game on Facebook called Wordscraper. The brothers have obviously been preparing this countermove for a long time. Wordscraper is designed to get around any of the intellectual property… → Read More
Long outplayed by two Indian brothers, Hasbro finally delivers a massive counter blow to Scrabulous, one of the most loved games on Facebook. Scrabulous fans in North America will see the following message when they try to play the game: Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here. → Read More
Facebook now has vaporware. After a lot of huffing and puffing at the beginning of the year, Hasbro and Electronic Arts are finally getting ready to unveil their official version of Scrabble on Facebook. Today, they announced that the Facebook app EA has been working on for more than six months will be launched later this month, although a version on Pogo (EA’s online casual gaming site) is… → Read More
We have terrible news for all eight of you soccer fans. It looks like EA has acquired the exclusive license to Spain’s La Liga, meaning FIFA will be the only game to feature the Spanish league. In other words, don’t go looking for official LFP logos and whatnot in Pro Evolution Soccer 2009. That’s a real shame, since everybody who’s anybody knows PES has been consistently… → Read More
[Update 8/4/08: The acquisition price subsequently reported by EA is $15 million, not $30 million. But that amount does not include any additional earnout for the founders]. Shawn Fanning, best known for founding Napster, has a new job. He will be working at Electronic Arts, which is about to buy his social-network-gaming startup Rupture for $30 million, according to sources with knowledge of the… → Read More
The saga of Scrabulous is nearing an end. The Facebook version of Scrabble raised the ire of Hasbro and Mattel, which jointly own the rights to the game abroad and in the U.S., respectively. They have already asked Facebook to pull Scrabulous, one of the most popular apps on the social networking site. So why is Scrabulous still up on Facebook? A flurry of behind the scenes deal-making has been… → Read More
Uh oh. A guy in a suit is saying that Electronic Arts is going to be slashing the prices on certain EA Sports titles, mostly for the PlayStation 2 although I’d expect some PC-version cuts in there as well. These are the "08" games too like NBA Live 08, Madden 08, and Tiger Woods 08. Fourteen games in all will be price-reduced. Analyst Evan Wilson says that "pre-holiday price… → Read More
Months after EA and Jobs made love on the WWDC stage, consumers have yet to see any of the games that EA promised. Titles like Madden ’08 and Battlefield 2142 are supposed to be coming to OS X, but have yet to surface. Now things are getting fishy. Apparently EA is not commenting on OS X-related games and Apple is directing all calls and inquiries to EA. In all reality, EA is probably going… → Read More
Yah dude, like, that ring could buy us so much Easy Mac Hey brah! I just got back from the DeltSig house and we chugged three cans of Keystone before we played a Madden ’08 exhibition. Yah, wicked sweet, I know. But yo dude, did you hear about that shit? Yeah, that shit Electronic Arts is doing or whatevs. It’s like, if you’re super good at Madden like yours truly is, then you… → Read More
Normally a new Electronic Arts game would hold my attention span for about six seconds, which is long enough to pour a cup of coffee and curse when I stub my toe. But this new title for the iPod grasps my immediate attention for a few reasons. Sims Bowling features accurate bowling physics and control via the Click Wheel. Plus the graphics don’t look too shabby either. What’s really… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
