EA acquires Titanfall studio Respawn Entertainment Entertainment

EA has acquired Respawn Entertainment, the studio behind the Titanfall games. The publisher pays an amount of up to $455 million. The arrival of Titanfall 3 can be deduced from the conditions for this.

The acquisition builds on the existing partnership, according to EA, which includes multiple projects currently in development, with the publisher touting a new Titanfall and Star Wars game and an upcoming VR title. EA will pay $151 million in cash and provide $164 million in shares.

In addition, an amount of 140 million dollars is involved in the acquisition, which will be transferred if certain performance targets are met. For example, those bonuses depend on the Metacritic scores of the upcoming Star Wars game and Titanfall 3.

Respawn has been independent until now. There was an offer from the Korean Nexon, according to Kotaku, which made EA decide to offer a higher amount. Nexon specializes in online games for PC and mobile. Among others, Counter-Strike Online and EVE Online are from the publisher. The acquisition comes a week after EA’s closing of Visceral Games; that studio was also working on a Star Wars game. Respawn was founded in 2010 by former Infinity Ward employees Jason West and Vince Zampella, who worked on Call of Duty at that studio but were fired after a conflict with Activision.