Electronic Arts, Inc.

Founded in 1982 as Amazin' Software by Trip Hawkins, Electronic Arts (EA) has built an empire of brand labels. The company is considered one of the largest players in the industry, often through acquisitions of successful development studios. It owns a large number of well-known intellectual properties such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Sims/SimCity, Command & Conquer, Battlefield and a wide range of sports licenses and rights to use external properties for films and toys.

Electronic Arts Distribution (EAD) was EA's third party publishing house, which distributed titles from the likes of Disney Interactive, LEGO, LucasArts, Square Soft, and more throughout Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific (Australia). EAD was in existence from 1987-1991 and lead by Larry Probst, Senior VP at the time. Distribution of third-party titles continued with the division EA Distribution, until September 1997 when it was reformed to include full publishing, with development and marketing as well. In June 2003 the initiative was renamed EA Partners. In 2016, the initiative was revived with the EA Originals label.

EA Studios was EA's development arm, which consists of studios dotted around the United States, with the more common studios in use in Seattle and Canada. EA also has development studios in Japan and London.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the company would acquire a large amount of studios and intellectual properties, such as Origin Systems, Maxis Software, Bullfrog Productions, Westwood Studios, Digital Illusions CE and others, while also founding its own like EA Redwood Shores (later Visceral Games) (see full list below). A common criticism towards EA would be the rate in which it would close or reshuffle its subsidiaries.

The company had a disappointing fiscal year in 2007. They miscalculated the success of the Nintendo Wii and focused mainly on the Xbox 360 and the PS3, resulting in only two Wii launch titles, ports of existing games: Need for Speed: Carbon and Madden NFL 07. To catch up, they acquired Headgate Studios which they had been working together with for the Tiger Woods PGA series since 2000, and turned it into EA Salt Lake, focusing the studio entirely on Wii development. On 11 October 2007, EA acquired VG Holding Corp., the holding company of BioWare and Pandemic Studios for US$ 775 million.

In June 2007, the company was reorganized into four labels:

• EA Casual (led by Kathy Vrabeck)
• EA Games (led by Frank Gibeau)
• EA Sports (led by Joel Linzner)
• The Sims (led by Nancy Smith until October 2008, then Rod Humble)

The four labels are supported by two new groups: Central Development Services and Global Publishing. Central Development Services, both led by Executive Vice President John Schappert. The Casual label was closed in November 2008 and merged into The Sims label along with the Hasbro partnership. The Sims as a label also disappeared.

In February 2008, the company also set its sights on major publisher Take-Two Interactive Software and most importantly the Rockstar studios it owns, mostly in response of the merger between Activision and Vivendi, but eventually in October 2008 it was confirmed there was no agreement.

In November 2009, EA announced to axe 1,500 jobs by the end of March 2010 as part of a new cost reduction plan, following net losses that increased during its second quarter to USD 391 million. Several studios were closed (such as Pandemic Studios) or restructured (such as EA Los Angeles being split to Danger Close and Victory Games).

In June 2011, EA decided to stop distributing their PC games via Steam, as they focused on their new competing service Origin, which replaced their prior EA Download Manager (EADM). Some existing titles like Crysis 2 were even delisted from Steam. On 12 July 2011, EA acquired PopCap Games.

In June 2012, COO Peter Moore announced a shift toward free-to-play and microtransactions in the gaming industry as a whole, and the company itself would match this business model around this time, to much controversy.

On 18 March 2013, John Riccitiello would step down as EA's CEO. After a transitional period during which the position was temporarily held by Larry Probst, Andrew Wilson was named as the company's CEO on 17 September 2013, after years of leading the EA Sports label. In the same year, EA fired approximately 10% of its workforce, but also acquired an exclusive Star Wars license for games for 10 years.

In mid-2014, online services for many EA games were to be shut down as part of the GameSpy Industries closure, but despite securing an extra month of uptime compared to other companies' titles (i.e. 30 June 2014 as the end date), EA would not migrate any of them to a different infrastructure.

In 2015, EA would open itself to publishing smaller productions by companies they do not directly own, such as Unravel. Their 2017 title Star Wars: Battlefront II would come at the peak of public attention over the loot box monetization system, which many companies were using at the time. EA was perceived as the clearest example of such practices, and faced legal issues in multiple countries over it. In the same year, they acquired Respawn Entertainment.

In October 2019, EA would return to publishing their PC games on Steam, but largely with an additional EA account requirement and/or Origin integration. In 2020, they would rebrand their EA Access subscription system to EA Play, and would offer it on non-Origin storefronts such as Steam and Microsoft Store's Windows Apps section in addition to the Xbox and PlayStation stores it was available on previously. In the same year, they outbid Take-Two Interactive Software to acquire Codemasters.

In 2023, the company split its operations to two labels - EA Sports and EA Entertainment, with studios meant to be assigned to one of them.

Known subsidiaries

Names in italics used to be subsidiaries, but no longer are as they were closed or sold off.

Labels and product lines used by the company

• EA Games (2000-2005 with branding, until early 2010s officially; mainline label)
• EA Entertainment (2023-present; mainline label)
• EA Sports (1992-present; sports games)
• EA Sports BIG (2000-2008; casual and extreme sports games)
• EA Mobile (2005-present; online and mobile games)
• EA Partners / EA Originals (latter is active; externally developed games)
• Pogo.com (active; casual online games)
• EA Play and EA Casual (inactive; casual games)
• EA Interactive (inactive; online and mobile games)
• EA Classics, EA Collector and EA Value Games (inactive; budget-price re-releases)

Acquired development studios and companies

• Distinctive Software (acquired in 1991 - renamed to EA Canada, then EA Vancouver)
• ORIGIN Systems (acquired in 1992 - closed in 2004)
• Bullfrog Productions (acquired in 1995 - absorbed into EA Bright Light in 2001, until that studio was closed in 2012)
• Kingsoft (acquired in 1995 - absorbed into EA's German office by 2000)
• Manley & Associates (acquired in 1996 - renamed to EA Seattle - closed in 2002)
• Maxis Software (acquired in 1997; multiple studios formed - Maxis Emeryville closed in 2015)
  • Maxis South (acquired in 1997 - closed in 2000)
• ABC Software AG (acquired in 1998)
• Westwood Studios (acquired in 1998 - closed in 2003, staff partially absorbed into EA Los Angeles)
• Burst (acquired in 1998 - renamed to Westwood Pacific, then EA Pacific - merged into EA Los Angeles in 2003)
• Tiburon Entertainment (acquired in 1998 - renamed to EA Tiburon, then EA Orlando)
• PlayNation (acquired in 1999)
• Kesmai (1999)
• Dreamworks Interactive (acquired in 2000 - now Ripple Effect Studios, formerly known as EA Los Angeles, Danger Close, DICE Los Angeles)
• Black Box Games (acquired in 2002 - renamed to EA Black Box and EA Jawbreaker - closed in 2013)
• Studio 33 (2003 - renamed to Electronic Arts North West Studio - closed in 2006)
• NuFX (acquired in 2004 - absorbed into EA Chicago - closed in 2007)
• Criterion Software (acquired in 2004 - later part of EA Bright Light until that studio was closed in 2012, then individual subsidiary)
• JAMDAT Mobile (2005)
  • JAMDAT Mobile (Canada) (acquired in 2005 - renamed to EA Mobile Montreal - closed in 2013)
  • JAMDAT Mobile (Japan) (acquired in 2005 - renamed to EA Mobile Japan)
  • JAMDAT Mobile (Romania) (acquired in 2005 - renamed to EA Mobile Romania SRL, then EA Romania SRL)
• Mythic Entertainment (acquired in 2006 - renamed to BioWare Mythic, then Mythic - closed in 2014)
• Phenomic Game Development (acquired in 2006 - renamed to EA Phenomic - closed in 2013)
• Digital Illusions CE (acquired in 2006)
• Headgate Studios (acquired in 2006 - renamed to EA Salt Lake)
• BioWare Corporation (Edmonton) and BioWare Austin (acquired in 2008)
• Pandemic Studios (Los Angeles) (acquired in 2008 - closed in 2009, partly folded into EA Los Angeles, now known as Ripple Effect Studios)
  • Pandemic Studios (Brisbane) (acquired in 2008 - closed in 2008)
• Hands-On Mobile Korea (acquired in 2008 - now EA Mobile Korea)
• J2MSoft (acquired in 2008)
• Bight Interactive (acquired in 2009 - renamed to Bight Games)
• J2Play (acquired in 2009 - renamed to EA Kitchener)
• Playfish (acquired in 2009)
• Chillingo (acquired in 2010)
• IronMonkey Studios (acquired in 2010 - absorbed into Firemonkeys in 2012)
• Firemint (acquired in 2011 - absorbed into Firemonkeys in 2012)
  • Infinite Interactive (acquired in 2011 - through the Firemint acquisition - independent again as of 2012)
• PopCap Games (acquired in 2011)
• Respawn Entertainment (acquired in 2017)
• Industrial Toys (acquired in 2018 - closed in 2023)
• The Codemasters Software Company (acquired in 2021)
  • Codemasters Birmingham (acquired in 2021)
  • Codemasters Cheshire (acquired in 2021 - merged into Criterion Software in 2022)
• Glu Mobile (acquired in 2021)
• Metalhead Software (acquired in 2021)
• Playdemic (acquired in 2021)

Established development studios

• EA Manchester (formed cca 1994 - closed in 1997)
• EA Baltimore (formed cca 1996 - closed in 2000)
• EA Montreal (formed in 2003)
• Visceral Games (formed in 1998 as EA Redwood Shores Studio - closed in 2017)
• EA Chicago (formed in or before 2005 - closed in 2007)
• EA Studios Japan (formed in or before 2006 - closed in 2007)
• EA Shanghai (formed in or before 2008)
• Easy Studios (formed in 2008 - status unknown as of 2015)
• Electronic Arts Asia Pacific Pte
• Pogo Austin (formed in 2008)
• EA Capital Games (formed in 2008)
• EA Tiburon North Carolina (unknown formation date)
• EA2D (unknown formation date - later BioWare San Francisco - closed in 2013)
• BioWare Montréal (formed in 2009 - absorbed into Motive Studios in 2017)
• 8lb Gorilla (formed in 2009)
• Visceral Games Melbourne (formerly Electronic Arts Melbourne - closed in September 2011)
• Victory Games (formed in 2010 - briefly known as BioWare Victory - closed in 2013)
• EA Gothenburg (formed in 2011 - formerly Ghost Games)
• tracktwenty (formed in 2012)
• Motive Studios (formed in 2015)
• Spearhead (unknown formation date, formerly EA Seoul)
• EA Red Crow Studios (formed between 2014 and 2016)
• Redwood Studios (formed in 2016)
• Ridgeline Games (formed in 2022 - closed in 2024, some developers moved to Ripple Effect)
• Cliffhanger Games (formed in 2023)

Known distribution offices: Australia, Brazil, China, Czechia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan (former), Japan (current), Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden (proper), Sweden (Nordic), Thailand, United Kingdom, United States.