Take-Two buying FarmVille gang Zynga in $12.7 billion deal
Planning to make more of their series mobile, and such
Zynga, the company whose games made being Facebook friends with your family even more annoying, are selling to Take-Two. The owners of Rockstar and 2K plan to buy up Zynga shares in a deal that'll value the company at $12.7 billion (£9.4b). Take-Two hope to use Zynga's social and mobile expertise to make more games based on their games. Sure sure, #business and all, but I'd rather spend that much money on 9.8 billion Greggs sausage rolls instead of Grand Theft Autoville or something.
Take-Two announced yesterday that they're looking to snap up all Zynga shares, paying a mixture of cash and Take-Two stock to shareholders. That'll value the company at $12.7 billion, which frankly is an imaginary quantity of money. At this level of business, what even is numbers?
Take-Two and Zynga's boards have approved of the deal, though it's still dependent on shareholders and regulators giving the go-ahead. They expect to complete it sometime from March to the end of June.
Along with profiting from Zygna's games, Take-Two hope that their experience will combine with Take-Two's own library of games to form "an industry-leading portfolio". They say "there is a meaningful opportunity to create mobile games and new cross-platform experiences" for "many" of their established series. Take-Two already make some mobile games internally, like NBA 2K, but Zynga boast almost 3000 people and a whole lot of experience. They make more than FarmVille, obvs.
Take-Two are not announcing any specific planned projects at this point. But, broadly speaking, I'd expect them to continue to dilute everything they own as much as they can with spin-offs, wring as much value as possible from those #ips and #brands through a belief (perhaps founded, sadly) that people are mostly interested in familiar names. That's business, baby. And this is the consolidation of the video games industry.