The Takeover Will Soon Be Official
For quite a few months now there has been some back and forth as to who, if anyone, was going to take over ownership of Codemasters –the developer behind a multitude of popular racing titles such as the F1, GRID, Project Cars, and DiRT franchises. Now, it looks as if Electronic Art’s offer to purchase the developer has been formally accepted by Codemasters’ shareholders.
Take-Two Interactive originally put a bid of $973 million USD in on the developer last year. That may have seemed like a large offer at the time, but it ultimately pales in comparison to the offer EA made in December —a whopping $1.2 billion USD. Codemasters board of directors recommended the company go through with this offer, and subsequently, Take-Two never made a counter bid, paving the way for the offer to go through.
According to an update from VGC released today, the company’s shareholders got together to vote to approval or deny the offer. At this vote, 63 of the 76 shareholders who voted, voted in favor of EA’s offer. The 63 who voted in favor of the offer represent 99% of the company’s shares.
Now that the deal has officially been approved by the company’s shareholders, the offer has to be legally sanctioned during a court meeting which will take place on February 16. Codemasters shares will be suspended following the court hearing on February 18, and will then be cancelled from admission to trading on the London Stock Exchange, on February 19.
It turns out EA already has big plans for the studio as they hope to release new racing games every year under Codemasters’ direction. EA already had a good foot in the racing game market prior to purchasing Codemasters, with their Need for Speed franchise. Now, with Codemasters’ IPs under their development umbrella, they have secured a substantial portion of the racing game industry.
EA’s acquisition of Codemasters is expected to be complete in the first quarter of 2021.
