EA acquires mobile games developer Playdemic from WarnerMedia for $1.4 billion

Certain gamers might not like to hear this, but mobile games littered with microtransactions make a lot of money. And Electronic Arts know this, having made a small fortune off of microtransaction in their various games for many years now. And they’re hoping to potently make even more as the company has announced that it has acquired Playdemic from WarnerMedia for $1.4 billion.

Playdemic is perhaps most known for their popular Golf Clash franchise, which has over 10 million players on the Google Play Store and has found massive success in the intuitive mechanic that has made it such a hit. A mechanic that EA is hoping it can incorporate into some of its other series, either as themed golf games or new games altogether.

For EA, this news follows the publisher’s acquisition of mobile-developer Glu in February for $2.1 billion and makes it clear that the company believes there is a lot of money to be made off mobile games. And when you have as many players as games from these companies do, it’s easy to see why that could be the case. If they can just continue making games that attract millions of players, then there is definitely plenty of opportunities to monetise them and make a small fortune.

For WarnerMedia, it shows that the company is going through big changes after joining Discovery, but it is still very firmly in the gaming market with the likes of Lego, Harry Potter, and Mortal Kombat being its most notable franchises. Perhaps WarnerMedia wants to consolidate and develop these franchises more specifically and leave the very different nature of Playdemic’s Golf Clash to a more specific game-focused company like EA. Time will tell how this acquisition will work for both companies.

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