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Valve "Happy" To Talk Buyouts With EA
Posted By: John Manalang - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 9:17 AM

While EA's latest bid to acquire a certain company is taking longer than they expected, at least one prominent developer seems to be willing to take an offer from the third-party mega publisher. Valve VP Doug Lombardi said that he would be "happy to have that conversation" if EA approaches them with an offer.

"We set up the deal so that it turned out that if EA was this evil empire, that it wasn't going to last forever," said Lombardi. Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications as the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to buyout multiple companies, such as the recent purchase of Mass Effect developers, BioWare.

"EA was very progressive about saying, 'We understand who you guys are. We understand what Steam is. We don't want Steam to go away,'" said Lombardi. He also mentioned that his company is "doing pretty well" with their recent work such as the Steam digital games platform for the PC and The Orange Box that features over five titles, including the first-person puzzle hit, Portal.

ShackNews: Valve 'Happy' to Talk Buyouts, Praises EA


Comment(s)

Posted by mercisan - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 11:28 PM
Valve is awesome. Would hate to see it go the EA direction.
Posted by SeanMcA93 - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 7:58 PM
That's like saying a water closet makes a perfect hot tub.

And that's only true when you're drunk.
Posted by DPsx72 - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 3:33 PM
What if we WANT to get rid of Steam? That POS virus prevented me on numerous occasions from playing HL2. So much so that I struggled to finish the game then promptly removed any and all traces of HL2 and Steam - never to be reinstalled and get infected again. I've boycotted all their recent games until that disease goes away.

So while I'm against EA buying T2 or any company for that matter (face it, we all know they produce sucky games), I wouldn't care about Valve at the moment.
Posted by gravy666 - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 3:27 PM
"We set up the deal so that it turned out that if EA was this evil empire, that it wasn't going to last forever."

Ha ha, great way of explaining it...
Posted by Slansing - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 1:58 PM
Vote with your money... Stop buying a game if it's crap, *and* tell your uninformed friends not to buy it too. The problem here is that currently 2 crappy games make more money than 1 decent game. Look at the flood of shovelware into the Wii - grandparents walking into BestBuy to buy xmas gifts have no idea what POS they're buying.

Anyway, EA and Valve have quite some synergy if Valve could tap into EA's coffers and ridiculously large game library to put on Steam (Westwood, Bullfrog, Sims, EA Sports...), and EA could finally grab a piece of that digital distribution market. Honestly, it makes a whole lot of business sense.
Posted by tentaro - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 12:47 PM
ahh hit enter by accident... This would be one of the biggest mistakes Valve could make. I do enjoy a few EA games like Battlefield Anything for 1, but while it may be good financially for Valve it won't be good in the long run unless they let the heads still run there company the way it is and only want the name attached to theirs.

Hey EA why not acquire SquareEnix and Capcom while you are at it?
Posted by tentaro - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 12:43 PM
"Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to buyout multiple companies, such as the recent purchase of Mass Effect developers, BioWare."

And then closing them down"

Yeah don't know where you heard that but Bioware is still open. They are creating KOTOR Online after all :)
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Posted by IntelliMoo - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 12:16 PM
Guess some really do want make death of pc gamming true.
Posted by Darkshadowkg - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 11:45 AM
"Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to...

change the workings of companys they takeover and make them crap.

please if they buy valve make them decide how to make there games without advertising
Posted by bigmonstefan - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 11:13 AM
for all the complaints out there, just keep in mind that they are trying out some new IPs (dead space for one and Army of Two wasn't bad if you had someone alive helping you). As for companies buying out other companies and shutting them down, just take a look at... well...just about every major company out there. I know Microsoft has been notorious for it and I wouldn't be shocked if Sony has done it more than just a few times.

Now, I guess I could try to play devils advocate with Madden, but I can't.
Posted by Tmidiman - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 11:13 AM
"Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to buyout,...

Other IPs, but never able to create any decent IPs of it's own.
Posted by BobitoZ - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 11:08 AM
Please Valve, you guys are to good for EA.
Posted by Lucifer6972 - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:53 AM
Man, EA doesn't play around, huh?
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Posted by yoshiarecool - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:44 AM
NOOOOOO VALVE
I love you guys to death. You take all the time YOU want to make the games YOU want the way YOU want them on the consoles YOU want to put them on. That's what makes you guys one of the best in the industry
EA would go and say "Ok. Put Half Life 2 on the Wii and change the word Combine to Coca-Cola to get advertising". Oh, and put a new half life out every year. Don't worry about innovation, were EA; we understand how to milk fans
Posted by WhereAmI1980 - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:29 AM
well, Valve has always defended EA...

so i guess they're getting what they have been wishing for...
Posted by Slaytanic40oz - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:18 AM
Wait did they close Bioware down while I wasn't paying attention? Last I heard they were still doing ME2
Posted by Tmidiman - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:17 AM
"Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to buyout,...

Other IPs, but never able to create any decent IPs of it's own.
Posted by Tmidiman - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:15 AM
"Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to,...

spend millions to aquire companies, but not a cent to teach it's own programmers how to create a decent playing videogame.
Posted by Zelahn - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:14 AM
What could possibly be so evil about Electronic Arts? Is it the fact that they swindle Maddenites every year into buying the same game, for the same price with only the change of updated team rosters? The fact that the year after they had strong competition in the form of 2K Sports, they bought the licensing rights to not only the NFL, but ESPN just to rub some dirt in their eyes? Or could it be the consistently awful licensed titles that they release, banking on the idea that if you put the logo of a popular franchise on their VP's corn speckled crap pressed into a DVD case, fans of said franchise will buy it? So many options, but the central truth is that EA does nothing for speaking to how intelligent gamers can be... or nothing for gamers. PERIOD.
Posted by Tmidiman - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:12 AM
"Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to,...

Take game IPs like Burnout and reduce them to shadows of there former selves.
Posted by Tmidiman - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:08 AM
"Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to,...

release badly done licensed games and yet no one pulls their license away from them.
Posted by Tmidiman - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 9:59 AM
"Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to buyout,...

The NFL license and releasing donkey turd smelling football games year after year, And getting great reviews for them for some odd reason.
Posted by Tmidiman - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 9:54 AM
"Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to buyout multiple companies,...

And then releasing crap games year after year, while getting great reviews from well paid reviewers.
Posted by Beleabub - Tuesday, August 05, 2008 9:40 AM
"Electronic Arts has been dubbed by gamers and publications the "evil empire' due to the company's tendency to buyout multiple companies, such as the recent purchase of Mass Effect developers, BioWare."


And then closing them down

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