News EA acquisition of Codemasters gets green light from shareholders

I have mixed feelings about Codemasters. I have very fond memories of some of their games (Operation Flashpoint, Overlord, etc) but I also remember the attrocious way they dealt with gamers complaining about the issues in the Formula 1 franchise games. I bought F1 2010, but the AI (fantasy qualifying times) and insane rubberbanding destroyed my enjoyment of it. The promised fixes in patches never materialised. The same issue existed in F1 2011, which I refused to buy as a result. They reportedly fixed it in F1 2012, but most certainly had not. I've not bought one since, although I have got F1 2015 and F1 2018 for free via Humble offers... but I've played neither one.

Dirt Rally was good, though.

That said, Codies will be owned by a (just freshly made at the end of last year) "indirect subsidiary"? Seems like lots of opportunities for Hollywood accounting there.

 

Given EA's history for killing off game studios this isn't good news, the below list reads like a Gamers Obituary.

1.Bullfrog Productions (1987 – 2001) - Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, and Dungeon Keeper
2.Westwood Studios (1985 – 2003) - Command & Conquer series
3.Origin Systems (1983 – 2004) - Ultima series
4.NuFX (1990 – 2007) - NBA Street series
5.Pandemic Studios (1998 – 2009) - Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, Destroy All Humans!, and Full Spectrum Warrior
6.PlayFish (2007 – 2013) - Facebook games
7. Black Box Games (1998 – 2013) - Need for Speed, skate
8. DreamWorks Interactive (1995 – 2013) - Medal of Honor, The Lord of the Rings, James Bond
9. Phenomic Game Development (1997 – 2013) - Settlers series, SpellForce franchise
10. Victory Games (2010 – 2013) - made and killed before it had made anything
11. Mythic Entertainment (1995 – 2014) - Dark Age of Camelot
12. Maxis Software (1987 – 2015) - The Sims, sim city.
13. EA Salt Lake (1992 – 2017) - the premiere golf simulator developers
14. Visceral Games (1998 – 2017) - CyberTiger, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, MySims,The Simpsons Game, and ofc Dead Space

 

'Meanwhile, the EA CEO said the acquisition would position EA for the creation, launch, and service of the biggest and best racing games ever.' Hahaha, hohoho, stop it ! my sides are splitting.

 

Games like Assetto Corsa, RaceRoom or iRacing are niche products (and consequently of no interest to an AAA market entity like EA).

The only ongoing mainstream car racing games series EA doesn't own is Forza.

So EA is right about them now basically having a monopoly on racing games (even if it is for the completely wrong reasons).

 

Oh dear...