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Why Titanfall studio Respawn sold to EA

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Electronic Arts announced it will acquire Titanfall maker Respawn Entertainment for as much as $455 million on Thursday, in its biggest deal since it acquired PopCap Games for $750 million in 2011. The deal brings Respawn’s Titanfall property into EA’s fold of first-person shooter franchises.

The reaction of fans was mixed, as some worried that EA might eventually shut down Respawn, as it recently did with the 70-person Visceral Studios in Redwood City, California. But EA paid $2.2 million per employee to get the 205 employees of Respawn, and shutting it down so soon would be silly.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.