EA Acquires PopCap for $750 Million

Last month, an acquisition rumor emerged involving casual game developer PopCap, and at the time, it was Electronic Arts that got most nods as being the most probable purchaser. Well, anyone who agreed with that has been proven right, as EA today announced its plans to purchase the developer for $650 million in cash and $100 million in shares of EA stock.

Founded in 2000, PopCap quickly became one of the most popular casual game developers around, releasing such gems (no pun) as Bejeweled, Feeding Frenzy, Zuma, Chuzzle, Bookworm, Peggle, Plants vs. Zombies, SquareEnix joint production Gyromancer and so on.

I’m not sure how the exactly the deal went down, but PopCap CEO David Roberts said that his company chose EA as a publisher as it will, “scale our games and services to deliver more social, mobile, casual fun to an even bigger, global audience.“

The first thing we hear shouted from the rooftops as soon as big acquisition goes down is that the buyer will kill off the acquired, but I’m not so sure about this one. EA hasn’t exactly proven itself stellar in the casual game market, although it has been making leaps and bounds in the past year or so. With an acquisition of PopCap, it can really make an impact into this market, and have pretty-well every gaming segment covered.

You can read a bit more information the acquisition at the USA Today link below, or for a more humorous look, you can hit up PopCap’s site.