The new company under Electronic Arts‘ hands will not become immediately controlled by Andrew Wilson.

Last year, it was a big surprise for us to hear that Take-Two has put forward a bid to acquire Codemasters, which itself bought Slightly Mad Studios. However, Electronic Arts has placed a higher bid for them, and Codemasters’ board of directors approved the deal for 1.2 billion dollars – the transaction has recently closed, so Codemasters is now officially part of Electronic Arts.

However, there is some scepticism around the deal, as we could mention EA Black Box or two studios from Ghost Games, that all got locked after a while (or we can name Visceral Games as well…). Perhaps this is why Matt Bilbey, an Electronic Arts executive, sent a statement to IGN. The statement follows:

„We are huge fans of the racing genre and I know that many of your readers are too, which is why I’m sure they’ll understand just why we’ve admired Codemasters for so long. We intend to build on the success that Codemasters have generated, ensuring we help create a bright, brilliant, and exciting future for racing fans that are populated by amazing games delivered into the hands of more players than ever before.

Codemasters joins one of the strongest creative collectives in the industry alongside DICE, Respawn, Bioware, Criterion, EA Sports, and many others, and the shared knowledge and expertise of this group paves the way for significant innovation for all. We are looking forward to providing Codemasters with every level of support to drive success together, and know there is a strong future ahead of us,” Bilbey wrote.

Codemasters owns the F1, DIRT, DIRT Rally, GRID, and Project CARS IPs, which now belong to Electronic Arts.

Source: PSL