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154-589: Naughty Dog, LLC (formerly JAM Software, Inc. ) is an American first-party video game developer based in Santa Monica , California . Founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in 1984, the studio was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001. Gavin and Rubin produced a sequence of progressively more successful games, including Rings of Power and Way of the Warrior in the early 1990s. The latter game prompted Universal Interactive Studios to sign

308-434: A Fortune 500 company with over one thousand employees. In February 1982, Hawkins arranged a meeting with Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital to discuss financing his new venture, Amazin' Software. Valentine encouraged Hawkins to leave Apple, where the latter served as Director of Product Marketing, and allowed Hawkins to use Sequoia Capital's spare office space to start the company. Trip Hawkins incorporated and established

462-593: A database , Voice over IP , or add-in interface software; this is also known as middleware . Examples of this include SpeedTree and Havoc . Independents are software developers which are not owned by (or dependent on) a single publisher. Some of these developers self-publish their games, relying on the Internet and word of mouth for publicity. Without the large marketing budgets of mainstream publishers, their products may receive less recognition than those of larger publishers such as Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo. With

616-468: A Stanford MBA classmate, Jeff Burton from Atari for international business development. The business plan was again refined in September and reissued on October 8, 1982. By November, the employee headcount rose to 11, including Tim Mott, Bing Gordon , David Maynard, and Steve Hayes. Having outgrown the office space provided by Sequoia Capital, the company relocated to a San Mateo office that overlooked

770-507: A bigger company, albeit with Viacom as the potential bidder. In May 2008, EA announced that it would purchase the assets of Hands-On Mobile Korea, a South Korean mobile game developer and publisher. The company became EA Mobile Korea. In September 2008, EA dropped its buyout offer of Take-Two. No reason was given. As of November 6, 2008, it was confirmed that Electronic Arts is closing their Casual Label & merging it with their Hasbro partnership with The Sims Label. EA also confirmed

924-539: A black & white animation tool called Studio/1, and a series of Paint titles called Studio/8 and Studio/32 (1990). Relationships between Electronic Arts and their external developers often became difficult when the latter missed deadlines or diverged from the former's creative directions. In 1987, EA released Skate or Die! , their first internally developed game. EA continued publishing their external developers' games while experimenting with their internal development strategy. This led to EA's decision of purchasing out

1078-417: A conference call with reporters, stated that their poor performance in the fourth quarter was not due entirely to the poor economy, but also to the fact that they did not release any blockbuster titles in the quarter. In the quarter ending December 31, 2008, the company lost US$ 641 million . On February 2, 2009, Ludlum Entertainment had signed a deal with Electronic Arts to grant exclusive rights to bring

1232-452: A culture of "toxic geek masculinity" within the workplace. In addition, the conditions behind crunch time are far more discriminating towards women as this requires them to commit time exclusively to the company or to more personal activities like raising a family. These factors established conditions within some larger development studios where female developers have found themselves discriminated in workplace hiring and promotion, as well as

1386-409: A development tool called Game Oriented Object Lisp, to create the characters and gameplay. Cartoonists Charles Zembillas and Joe Pearson were recruited to create the characters of the game, which resulted in the titular character Crash Bandicoot . After 14 months of development, the game was shown to Sony Computer Entertainment , who then signed on to publish the game. Crash Bandicoot was shown to

1540-461: A direct competitor to Valve 's Steam and Epic Games ' Store . EA also owns and operates major gaming studios such as DICE , Motive Studio , BioWare , and Respawn Entertainment . Trip Hawkins had been an Apple Inc. employee since 1978, at a time when the firm had only about fifty employees. Over the next four years, the market for home personal computers skyrocketed. By 1982, Apple had completed its initial public offering (IPO) and become

1694-722: A final deal that would have had NBCUniversal spun out from Comcast before bringing EA within it. Amazon was also mentioned as a possible customer for EA; CNBC reported in late August that Amazon was no longer interested in a takeover. In January 2023, EA cancelled development on Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile, leading to the shutdown of developer Industrial Toys . On February 28, 2023, EA eliminated 200 QA testers from its Baton Rouge, Louisiana office. The testers predominantly worked on Respawn Entertainment 's Apex Legends battle royale game. On March 29, EA announced it would lay off 6% of its workforce, or 775 employees. In June 2023, EA announced an internal reorganization of

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1848-571: A first-party company. As a balance to not being able to release their game for other platforms, second-party developers are usually offered higher royalty rates than third-party developers. These studios may have exclusive publishing agreements (or other business relationships) with the platform holder, but maintain independence so that upon completion or termination of their contracts, they are able to continue developing games for other publishers if they choose to. For example, while HAL Laboratory initially began developing games on personal computers like

2002-410: A fixed period and generally work similar hours as full-time staff members, assisting across all areas of video game development, but as contractors, do not get any benefits such as paid time-off or health care from the employer; they also are typically not credited on games that they work on for this reason. The practice itself is legal and common in other engineering and technology areas, and generally it

2156-403: A game on schedule. The complexity of workflow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video game creation create difficulty in predicting milestones. The use of crunch time is also seen to be exploitative of the younger male-dominated workforce in video games, who have not had the time to establish a family and who were eager to advance within

2310-406: A game's profits. Current examples of first-party studios include PlayStation Studios for Sony, and Xbox Game Studios for Microsoft Gaming . Second-party developer is a colloquial term often used by gaming enthusiasts and media to describe game studios that take development contracts from platform holders and develop games exclusive to that platform, i.e. a non-owned developer making games for

2464-493: A gradual increase in stock value. In July 2015, Electronic Arts reached an all-time high with a stock value of US$ 71.63, surpassing the previous February 2005 record of $ 68.12. This is also up 54% from $ 46.57 in early January 2015. The surge was partly attributed to EA's then-highly anticipated Star Wars Battlefront reboot, which released one month before Star Wars: The Force Awakens , also highly anticipated. During E3 2015 , EA vice-president Patrick Söderlund announced that

2618-536: A group that will complement their objectives." This statement comes a week after EA announced it was laying off 6% about 600 of their staff positions and had a US$ 310 million net loss for the quarter. Due to the 2008 economic crisis , Electronic Arts had a poorer than expected 2008 holiday season, moving it in February 2009 to cut approximately 1,100 jobs, which it said represented about 11% of its workforce. It also closed 12 of their facilities. Riccitiello, in

2772-574: A licensing agreement to develop and release EA's titles, like John Madden Football , FIFA International Soccer , Shaq Fu , Jungle Strike and Urban Strike for various consoles. In 1995, Electronic Arts won the European Computer Trade Show award for best software publisher of the year. As the company was still expanding, they opted to purchase space in Redwood Shores, California in 1995 for construction of

2926-546: A lower quality of the 3DO's software library as a backfiring of its liberal license policy, it fell further behind and lost competition. Electronic Arts dropped its support for 3DO in favor of the PlayStation, 3DO's production ceased in 1996 and, for the remainder of the company's lifetime, 3DO developed video games for other consoles and the IBM PC until it folded in 2003. In 1994, Electronic Arts and THQ signed

3080-475: A mental breakdown after experiencing sexual harassment by a senior team member while working at Naughty Dog in late 2015, stating that he informed PlayStation's HR department and the following day was terminated from his position and offered $ 20,000 to remain silent regarding the allegations, which he declined. Naughty Dog responded to the allegations with a statement declaring that it had "not found any evidence of having received allegations from Mr. Ballard that he

3234-523: A mistake, often stripping smaller studios of its creative talent. Riccitiello said that the city-state model allows independent developers to remain autonomous to a large extent, and cited Maxis and BioWare as examples of studios thriving under the new structure. During 2007, EA announced that it would be bringing some of its major titles to the Mac . EA also released Battlefield 2142 , Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars , Crysis , Harry Potter and

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3388-541: A multi-year pact to broadcast Madden NFL competitive matches across the world through its Competitive Gaming Division arm. On August 14, 2018, Patrick Söderlund announced his departure from EA as its vice-president and chief design officer, after serving twelve years with the company. With Söderlund's departure, the SEED group was moved as part of EA's studios, while the EA Originals and EA Partners teams were moved under

3542-465: A new Sims and Casual Label, where there is a deep compatibility in the product design, marketing and demographics. ... In the days and weeks ahead, we will make further announcements on the reporting structure for the other businesses in the Casual Label including EA Mobile, Pogo, Media Sales and Online Casual Initiatives. Those businesses remain growth priorities for EA and deserve strong support in

3696-492: A new headquarters, which was completed in 1998. Early in 1997, Next Generation identified Electronic Arts as the only company to regularly profit from video games over the past five years, and noted it had "a critical track record second to none". In 1999, EA replaced their long-running Shapes logo with one based on the EA Sports logo used at the time. EA also started to use a brand-specific structure around this time, with

3850-547: A new packaged version of Crysis 2 that included all the downloadable content without the storefront features, EA did not publish any additional games on Steam until 2019, instead selling all personal computer versions of games through Origin. In July 2011, EA announced that it had acquired PopCap Games , the company behind games such as Plants vs. Zombies , Peggle and Bejeweled . EA continued its shift toward digital goods in 2012, folding its mobile-focused EA Interactive (EAi) division "into other organizations throughout

4004-531: A partnership in which EA becomes an exclusive major supplier of mobile games to Nokia mobile devices through the Nokia Content Discoverer. In the beginning, Nokia customers were able to download seven EA titles ( Tetris , Tetris Mania , The Sims 2 , Doom , FIFA 06 , Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 and FIFA Street 2 ) on the holiday season in 2006. Rick Simonson is the executive vice-president and director of Nokia and starting from 2006

4158-437: A position in a medium to large video game company. An experienced game-development employee, depending on their expertise and experience, averaged roughly $ 73,000 in 2007. Indie game developers may only earn between $ 10,000 and $ 50,000 a year depending on how financially successful their titles are. In addition to being part of the software industry, game development is also within the entertainment industry; most sectors of

4312-676: A remaining 14.8% stake in it in 2010. Since June 2023, the company is organized in two main divisions: EA Entertainment Technology & Central Development (EA Entertainment for short, formerly EA Games) and EA Sports. First introduced in 1991 as the Electronic Arts Sports Network, before being renamed due to a trademark dispute with ESPN, EA Sports publishes all the sports games from EA, including FC , Madden NFL , Fight Night , NBA Live , NCAA Football , Cricket , NCAA March Madness , Tiger Woods PGA Tour , NHL , NASCAR and Rugby . FIFA

4466-592: A roundtable discussion with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the professional association for developers. Statements made by the IGDA's current executive director Jen MacLean relating to IGDA's activities had been seen by as anti-union, and Game Workers Unite desired to start a conversation to lay out the need for developers to unionize. In the wake of the sudden near-closure of Telltale Games in September 2018,

4620-469: A series of companies they identify as successful, as well as the decision to release annualized franchises to cut budget costs. Because of Trip Hawkins' obsession of simulating a sports game, he signed a contract with football coach John Madden that led to EA's developing and releasing annual Madden NFL games. In 1988, EA published a flight simulator game exclusively for Amiga, F/A-18 Interceptor , with filled-polygon graphics that were advanced for

4774-407: A single publisher; one canceled game may devastate a small developer. Because of this, many small development companies are short-lived. A common exit strategy for a successful video game developer is to sell the company to a publisher, becoming an in-house developer. In-house development teams tend to have more freedom in game design and content than third-party developers. One reason is that since

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4928-403: A strong STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) background for women at the secondary education level, but there are issues with tertiary education such as at colleges and universities, where game development programs tend to reflect the male-dominated demographics of the industry, a factor that may lead women with strong STEM backgrounds to choose other career goals. There

5082-564: A subsidiary of EA. Wilson stated that "the franchises in our combined portfolio will enable us to create innovative new experiences and bring more players into the excitement of cars and motorsport". In January 2021, Disney announced it had revived the Lucasfilm Games label for its licensed video game properties and announced new games including a new Star Wars game that would be developed by Ubisoft aimed for release in 2023, indicating that EA's ten-year exclusive license in 2013 to

5236-527: A takeover bid for rival game company Take-Two Interactive . After its initial offer of US$ 25 per share, all cash stock transaction offer was rejected by the Take-Two board, EA revised it to US$ 26 per share, a 64% premium over the previous day's closing price and made the offer known to the public. Rumours had been floating around the Internet prior to the offer about Take-Two possibly being bought over by

5390-697: A unique case where nearly all parts of its labor force, including white-collar jobs such as video game development, may engage with labor unions under the Employment Protection Act often through collective bargaining agreements. Developer DICE had reached its union agreements in 2004. Paradox Interactive became one of the first major publishers to support unionization efforts in June 2020 with its own agreements to cover its Swedish employees within two labor unions Unionen and SACO . In Australia, video game developers could join other unions, but

5544-486: A weekend Hebrew school in Virginia. After they discovered a mutual interest in computers and video games, they began regularly discussing programming, game development, and game piracy during class. Having experimented with Lisp and C++ , Rubin and Gavin teamed up with a friend, Mike Goyet, and founded JAM Software in 1984. The acronym "JAM" stood for "Jason, Andy and Mike"; however, when Goyet became uninterested in

5698-469: Is a discounted series of EA Sports. In 2011, Forbes ranked EA Sports eighth on their list of most valuable sports brands, with a value of $ 625 million . EA All Play is a mobile-oriented label that, since 2012, publishes digital titles like The Simpsons ' , Tetris , and Battlefield , as well as Hasbro board games like Scrabble . The EA Competitive Gaming Division (CGD), founded in 2015 by Peter Moore and currently headed by Todd Sitrin,

5852-635: Is affiliated with John Riccitiello and are partners. In February 2007, Probst stepped down from the CEO job while remaining on the board of directors. His handpicked successor is John Riccitiello , who had worked at EA for several years previously, departed for a while, and then returned. Riccitiello previously worked for Elevation Partners , Sara Lee and PepsiCo . In June 2007, new CEO John Riccitiello announced that EA would reorganize itself into four labels, each with responsibility for its own product development and publishing (the city-state model). The goal of

6006-482: Is also a significant gap in racial minorities within the video game industry; a 2019 IGDA survey found only 2% of developers considered themselves to be of African descent and 7% Hispanic, while 81% were Caucasian; in contrast, 2018 estimates from the United States Census estimate the U.S. population to be 13% of African descent and 18% Hispanic. In a 2014 and 2015 survey of job positions and salaries,

6160-528: Is due to its strategy of platform-agnostic development and the creation of strong multi-year franchises. EA was the first publisher to release yearly updates of its sports franchises— Madden , FIFA , NHL , NBA Live , Tiger Woods , etc.—with updated player rosters and small graphical and gameplay tweaks. Recognizing the risk of franchise fatigue among consumers, EA announced in 2006 that it would concentrate more of its effort on creating new original intellectual property. In September 2006, Nokia and EA announced

6314-449: Is expected that this is meant to lead into a full-time position, or otherwise the end of the contract. But more recently, its use in the video game industry has been compared to Microsoft 's past use of " permatemp ", contract workers that were continually renewed and treated for all purposes as employees but received no benefits. While Microsoft has waned from the practice, the video game industry has adapted it more frequently. Around 10% of

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6468-533: Is generally illegal, companies often target their oldest workers first during layoffs or other periods of reduction. Older developers with experience may find themselves too qualified for the types of positions that other game development companies seek given the salaries and compensations offered. Some of the larger video game developers and publishers have also engaged contract workers through agencies to help add manpower in game development in part to alleviate crunch time from employees. Contractors are brought on for

6622-582: Is located in Stockholm and Vancouver . EA announced the closure of Visceral Games in October 2017. Prior, Visceral had been supporting EA's other games but was also working on a Star Wars title named Project Ragtag since EA's acquisition of the Star Wars license, even hiring Amy Hennig to direct the project. While EA did not formally give a reason for the closure, industry pundits believed that EA

6776-440: Is one of our biggest strengths. Looking around at the rest of the industry, and this is something that we do talk about quite a bit, the companies that are doing really innovative, cool things are all the ones that don't have the management, like the business side, directly injected into the company. Sony's put us in this fantastic situation where we don't have any producers; we don't have any interactions with Sony corporate at all on

6930-494: Is still their primary activity they are generally described as "publishers" rather than "developers". Developers may be private as well. In the video game industry , a first-party developer is part of a company that manufactures a video game console and develops mainly for it. First-party developers may use the name of the company itself (such as Nintendo ), have a specific division name (such as Sony's Polyphony Digital ) or have been an independent studio before being acquired by

7084-630: Is the group dedicated on enabling global eSports competitions on EA's biggest franchises including FIFA , Madden NFL , Battlefield and more. The Search for Extraordinary Experiences Division (SEED) was revealed at the 2017 Electronic Entertainment Expo as a technology research division and incubator, using tools like deep learning and neural networks to bring in player experiences and other external factors to help them develop more immersive narratives and games. SEED has offices in Los Angeles and Stockholm. EA Partners co-publishing program

7238-474: Is usually conducted in a casual business environment, with t-shirts and sandals as common work attire. Many workers find this type of environment rewarding and pleasant professionally and personally. However, the industry also requires long working hours from its employees (sometimes to an extent seen as unsustainable). Employee burnout is not uncommon. An entry-level programmer can make, on average, over $ 66,000 annually only if they are successful in obtaining

7392-680: The Jak and Daxter Collection . It contains high-definition ports of the original PlayStation 2 trilogy and was released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita respectively. In May 2013, Naughty Dog confirmed it will keep its existing in-house engine used in Uncharted and The Last of Us for the PlayStation 4 . On November 23, 2013, Corrinne Yu , principal engine architect at Microsoft 's Halo 4 developer 343 Industries , announced that she had joined Naughty Dog. On December 7, 2013, during

7546-606: The James Bond property, DreamWorks Interactive , and eventually DICE ; in the latter two cases, these studios were acquired by EA as part of the EA DICE family. In 2003, EA's president John Riccitiello pushed for a renaming of the EA Distribution label, seeing the potential to bring in more independent developers and additional revenue streams. While they rebranded the label as EA Partners in 2003, Riccitiello left EA

7700-659: The AFL–CIO writing an open letter to video game developers encouraging them to unionize. In January 2020, Game Workers Unite and the Communications Workers of America established a new campaign to push for unionization of video game developers, the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), in January 2020. Initial efforts for CODE were aimed to determine what approach to unionization would be best suited for

7854-456: The International Game Developers Association (IGDA), are conducting increasing discussions about the problem; they are concerned that working conditions in the industry cause a significant deterioration in employees' quality of life. Some video game developers and publishers have been accused of the excessive invocation of "crunch time". "Crunch time" is the point at which the team is thought to be failing to achieve milestones needed to launch

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8008-516: The MSX , they became one of the earliest second-party developers for Nintendo, developing exclusively for Nintendo's consoles starting with the Famicom, though they would self-publish their mobile games. A third-party developer may also publish games, or work for a video game publisher to develop a title. Both publisher and developer have considerable input in the game's design and content. However,

8162-528: The Me Too movement and have tried to address the symptoms of these problems industry-wide, the video game industry has yet to have its Me Too-moment, even as late as 2021. There also tends to be pay-related discrimination against women in the industry. According to Gamasutra 's Game Developer Salary Survey 2014, women in the United States made 86 cents for every dollar men made. Game designing women had

8316-660: The NCAA , EA announced in February 2021 that it was returning to college sports with a planned EA Sports College Football title to likely be released in 2023. The company announced its plans to extend its mobile commitment in February 2021 by acquiring Glu Mobile in an deal estimated worth $ 2.1 billion . The acquisition was completed by the end of April 2021. The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia acquired 7.4 million shares of EA, valued at $ 1.1 billion , in February 2021. Former CEO and current chairman Probst stated in May 2021 he

8470-542: The PlayStation 2 launch title X-Squad . The second; Square Electronic Arts L.L.C., would publish Square's titles in North America. The venture was described as a success by Square, as it allowed the company to release more of their titles in the North American market. In February 2003, with the preparation of Square and Enix's merger into Square Enix ; both partnerships were announced to be dissolved at

8624-1032: The RSX . Both enable developers to get better performance out of PlayStation hardware. Naughty Dog won the Studio of the Year award at the 2013 VGX , the 2013 Golden Joystick Awards , and the 2020 Golden Joystick Awards. First-party developer A developer may specialize in specific game engines or specific video game consoles , or may develop for several systems (including personal computers and mobile devices ). Some focus on porting games from one system to another, or translating games from one language to another. Less commonly, some do software development work in addition to games. Most video game publishers maintain development studios (such as Electronic Arts 's EA Canada , Square Enix 's studios, Activision 's Radical Entertainment , Nintendo EPD and Sony's Polyphony Digital and Naughty Dog ). However, since publishing

8778-617: The San Francisco Airport landing path. When he incorporated the company, Hawkins originally chose Amazin' Software as their company name, but his other early employees of the company universally disliked the name; as a result, the company changed its name to Electronic Arts in November 1982. He scheduled an off-site meeting in the Pajaro Dunes , where the company once held such off-site meetings. Hawkins had developed

8932-504: The Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union doing work for video games struck several major publishers, demanding better royalty payments and provisions related to the safety of their vocal performances, when their union's standard contract was up for renewal. The voice actor strike lasted for over 300 days into 2017 before a new deal was made between SAG-AFTRA and

9086-445: The Star Wars property was likely not extended. EA still maintained a non-exclusive license to Star Wars games, affirming more titles would be coming following this announcement. As of February 2021, EA's Star Wars games had sold more than 52 million copies and brought in more than $ 3 billion in revenue. After a six-year absence from producing college sports-based game due to legal issues related to student athlete likenesses with

9240-616: The video game industry . He told the Los Angeles Times : "Someone who was part of the co-creation of that world and those characters isn't getting a credit or a nickel for the work they put into it. Maybe we need unions in the video game industry to be able to protect creators." Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. ( EA ) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California . Founded in May 1982 by former Apple employee Trip Hawkins ,

9394-670: The 2004 holiday season, EA responded by making several large sports licensing deals which include an exclusive agreement with the NFL , and in January 2005, a 15-year deal with ESPN . The ESPN deal gave EA exclusive first rights to all ESPN content for sports simulation games. On April 11, 2005, EA announced a similar, 6-year licensing deal with the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) for exclusive rights to college football content. Much of EA's success, both in terms of sales and with regards to its stock market valuation,

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9548-534: The 2011 Spike TV Video Game Awards , Naughty Dog unveiled a new intellectual property , The Last of Us , described as a "post-apocalyptic third-person action-adventure game", following the plight of a teenage girl, Ellie, and her adult protector, Joel, in a post-apocalyptic United States overrun with humans infected with a disease reminiscent of the infection caused by Cordyceps unilateralis . The Last of Us received universal acclaim upon release. In 2012 and 2013, Naughty Dog teamed with Mass Media Inc. to release

9702-584: The 21st century, EA develops and publishes games of established franchises, including Battlefield , Need for Speed , The Sims , Medal of Honor , Command & Conquer , Dead Space , Mass Effect , Dragon Age , Army of Two , Apex Legends , and Star Wars , as well as the EA Sports titles FC , FIFA , Madden NFL , NBA Live , NHL , PGA , and UFC . Since 2022, their desktop titles appear on self-developed EA App , an online gaming digital distribution platform for PCs and

9856-685: The Amiga will blow your socks off. We think the Amiga, with its incomparable power, sound and graphics, will give Electronic Arts and the entire industry a very bright future. –Trip Hawkins, 1985 Amiga advertisement In the mid-1980s, Electronic Arts aggressively marketed products for the Amiga , a home computer introduced in 1985. Commodore had given EA development tools and prototype machines before Amiga's actual launch. For Amiga EA published some notable non-game titles. A drawing program Deluxe Paint (1985) and its subsequent versions became perhaps

10010-446: The IGDA found that people of color were both underrepresented in senior management roles as well as underpaid in comparison to white developers. Further, because video game developers typically draw from personal experiences in building game characters, this diversity gap has led to few characters of racial minority to be featured as main characters within video games. Minority developers have also been harassed from external groups due to

10164-548: The November 2019 release of Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order , as well as bringing the EA Access subscription service to Steam. While EA plans to continue to sell games on Origin, the move to add Steam releases was to help get more consumers to see their offerings. Due to COVID-19 lockdowns and growing demand for online games, EA's revenue grew to $ 1.4bn in the first quarter of 2020. EA rebranded both EA Access and Origin to EA Play on August 18, 2020, but otherwise without changing

10318-637: The Order of the Phoenix , Madden NFL 08 , Need for Speed: Carbon , and Spore for the Mac. All of the new games have been developed for the Macintosh using Cider, a technology developed by TransGaming that enables Intel -based Macs to run Windows games inside a translation layer running on Mac OS X. They are not playable on PowerPC-based Macs. In February 2008, it was revealed that Electronic Arts had made

10472-479: The Thief , Rings of Power and Way of the Warrior . Naughty Dog is known for its unique way of handling game development, as the studio does not have a producer in either of their teams. The work culture at Naughty Dog is very different from many other studios; there is less middle-management ; the studio's lead effects artist, Keith Guerrette, said: "It comes with a lot of pros and cons but I think it definitely

10626-622: The U.S., five in the United Kingdom, six in Continental Europe , and eight elsewhere. The majority of these companies and studios are now defunct , with some having been merged into other entities. Of the six companies which EA purchased a stake in, two remaining companies are based in the U.S., while three other U.S. companies are defunct. After acquiring a 19.9% stake in France-based Ubisoft in 2004, EA sold

10780-535: The acquisition of Activision Blizzard , stated it supported these unionization efforts. After this acquisition, the employees of Bethesda Game Studios , part of Zenimax under Microsoft, unionized under the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in July 2024. Over 500 employees within Blizzard Entertainment 's World of Warcraft division also unionized with CWA that same month. Sweden presents

10934-572: The advent of digital distribution of inexpensive games on game consoles, it is now possible for indie game developers to forge agreements with console manufacturers for broad distribution of their games. Other indie game developers create game software for a number of video-game publishers on several gaming platforms. In recent years this model has been in decline; larger publishers, such as Electronic Arts and Activision, increasingly turn to internal studios (usually former independent developers acquired for their development needs). Video game development

11088-516: The cancellation of a first-person shooter set in the Star Wars universe, and that the company would be moving away from licensed IP in favor of EA-owned franchises. In July 2024, actor labor union Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), which also has numerous video game voice actors as members, would initiate a labor strike against a number of video publisher, including EA, over concerns about lack of A.I. protections not only video game actors, but also

11242-431: The closest equity, making 96 cents for every dollar men made in the same job, while audio professional women had the largest gap, making 68% of what men in the same position made. Increasing the representation of women in the video game industry required breaking a feedback loop of the apparent lack of female representation in the production of video games and in the content of video games. Efforts have been made to provide

11396-570: The company after 17 years in November 2023, replaced as head of technology by Travis McIntosh. As a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment, Naughty Dog is best known for developing games for the PlayStation consoles, including the Crash Bandicoot series for the original PlayStation , Jak and Daxter on PlayStation 2 , and Uncharted and The Last of Us on PlayStation 3 , PlayStation 4 , and PlayStation 5 . Before this, they also developed games including Dream Zone , Keef

11550-544: The company began working on Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy for the PlayStation 2 . In 2004, Rubin, who had become the company's president, left the company to work on a new project, Iron and the Maiden . In addition to their inhouse game team, Naughty Dog is also home to the ICE Team , one of PlayStation Studios 's central technology groups. The company's first PlayStation 3 game, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune ,

11704-473: The company for fifteen years. Evan Wells remains in his role as president. In September 2017, game director Bruce Straley announced his departure from Naughty Dog, stating that he "found [his] energy focusing in other directions" following a sabbatical. Creative director Neil Druckmann was promoted to vice president in March 2018. In October 2017, former environment artist David Ballard claimed that he suffered

11858-508: The company leveraged to leapfrog its early competitors. Promoting its developers was a trademark of EA's early days. Games were sold in square packages modeled after album covers (such as those for 1983's M.U.L.E. and Pinball Construction Set ). Hawkins thought the packaging would both save costs and convey an artistic feeling. EA routinely referred to their developers as "artists" and gave them photo credits in their games and full-page magazine ads. Their first such ad, accompanied by

12012-504: The company said that current CFO and COO Blake Jorgensen would be stepping down by mid-2022. The company's COO role was taken over by Chief Studios Officer Laura Miele , while a search for a new CFO was launched. Longtime Microsoft executive Chris Suh was later appointed as CFO in March 2022. Industry reports around May 2022 asserted that EA had been looking to be acquired by larger media firms, including Disney, Apple, and Comcast / NBCUniversal . These reports said that EA had been nearing

12166-481: The company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the designers and programmers responsible for its games as "software artists". EA published numerous games and some productivity software for personal computers, all of which were developed by external individuals or groups until 1987's Skate or Die! The company shifted toward internal game studios, often through acquisitions, such as Distinctive Software becoming EA Canada in 1991. Into

12320-617: The company with a personal investment of an estimated US$ 200,000 on May 27, 1982. For more than seven months, Hawkins refined his Electronic Arts business plan . With aid from his first employee (with whom he worked in marketing at Apple), Rich Melmon, the original plan was written, mostly by Hawkins, on an Apple II in Sequoia Capital's office in August 1982. During that time, Hawkins also employed two of his former staff from Apple, Dave Evans and Pat Marriott, as producers , and

12474-567: The company would start investing more on smaller titles such as Unravel so as to broaden the company's portfolio. On December 10, 2015, EA announced a new division called Competitive Gaming Division, which focuses on creating competitive game experience and organizing ESports events. It was once headed by Peter Moore . In May 2016, Electronic Arts announced that they had formed a new internal division called Frostbite Labs. The new department specializes in creating new projects for virtual reality platforms, and "virtual humans". The new department

12628-457: The company's Strategic Growth group. On February 6, 2019, Electronic Arts' stock value was hit by a decline of 13.3%, the worst decline since Halloween 2008. This was largely due to the marketing of their anticipated title Battlefield V , which was released after the holiday season of October 2018. Stocks were already declining since late August, when EA announced that Battlefield V ' s release would be delayed until November. Upon release,

12782-433: The company's chief marketing officer. On August 23, EA announced it was eliminating 50 roles at BioWare , or 20% of its workforce. A group of former employees later sued EA, seeking better severance following their layoffs. In December 2023, EA laid off an unknown number of Codemasters employees. In February 2024, EA announced that it would lay off 670 employees, or 5% of its global workforce. The cuts came with

12936-456: The company, specifically those divisions led by EA Labels president Frank Gibeau, COO Peter Moore, and CTO Rajat Taneja, and EVP of digital Kristian Segerstrale." On March 18, 2013, John Riccitiello announced that he would be stepping down as CEO and a member of the Board of Directors on March 30, 2013. Larry Probst was also appointed executive chairman on the same day. Andrew Wilson was named as

13090-499: The company. In June 2011, EA launched Origin , an online service to sell downloadable games for personal computers directly to consumers. Around this time, Valve , which runs Steam in direct competition with Origin, announced changes to storefront policy disallowing games that used in-game purchases that were not tied to Steam's purchasing process, and removed several of EA's games, including Crysis 2 , Dragon Age II , and Alice: Madness Returns in 2012. Although it released

13244-525: The company. CEO Andrew Wilson announced a realignment of the company into two organizations – EA Sports and EA Entertainment – both of which would report directly to him, having Laura Miele, previously Chief Studios Officer and COO, as the president of EA Entertainment, and Cam Weber, formerly EVP and group General Manager of EA Sports as president of EA Sports. Vince Zampella , Samantha Ryan, and Jeff Karp continued on EA Entertainment, leading and overseeing specific studios under EA Entertainment. Also announced in

13398-478: The company. In July 2023, Wells announced he would retire from the studio by the year's end. Simultaneously, Druckmann became head of creative, with Mori promoted to studio manager and head of operations, Meyer to head of culture and communications, and Gyrling to head of technology. The leadership team was expanded further, with Erick Pangilinan and Jeremy Yates becoming co-heads of the art departments, and Anthony Newman to head of production and design. Gyrling departed

13552-416: The console manufacturer (such as Rare or Naughty Dog ). Whether by purchasing an independent studio or by founding a new team, the acquisition of a first-party developer involves a huge financial investment on the part of the console manufacturer, which is wasted if the developer fails to produce a hit game on time. However, using first-party developers saves the cost of having to make royalty payments on

13706-508: The console. This established the use of licensing fees as a model for third-party development that persists into the present. The licensing fee approach was further enforced by Nintendo when it decided to allow other third-party developers to make games for the Famicom console, setting a 30% licensing fee that covered game cartridge manufacturing costs and development fees. The 30% licensing fee for third-party developers has also persisted to

13860-526: The costs of these elements in anticipation of the game's full November 2017 launch, but they were reportedly told by Disney to disable all microtransactions until they could come up with a fairer monetization scheme. By March 2018, EA had developed a fairer system that eliminated the pay to win elements and drastically reduced costs for unlocking characters. The controversy over Battlefront II 's loot boxes led to an 8.5% drop in stock value in one month—about $ 3.1 billion and impacted EA's financial results for

14014-474: The data to public forums and threatening to release more if their demands were not met. EA acquired mobile game developer Playdemic Studios in Manchester, England from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in June 2021 for $ 1.4 billion , following the merger of Discovery, Inc. with WarnerMedia . As of June 2021, the acquisition was expected to complete by 2022. In their SEC filings in September 2021,

14168-527: The deal did not include those properties, so Cut the Rope became published by ZeptoLab , and Angry Birds became published by Rovio Entertainment . On May 4, 2011, EA reported $ 3.8 billion in revenues for the fiscal year ending March 2011, and on January 13, 2012, EA announced that it had exceeded $ 1 billion in digital revenue during the previous calendar year. In a note to employees, EA CEO John Riccitiello called this "an incredibly important milestone" for

14322-642: The departure of Kathy Vrabeck, who was given the position as former president of the EA Casual Division in May 2007. EA made this statement about the merger: "We've learned a lot about casual entertainment in the past two years, and found that casual gaming defies a single genre and demographic. With the retirement and departure of Kathy Vrabeck, EA is reorganizing to integrate casual games—development and marketing—into other divisions of our business. We are merging our Casual Studios, Hasbro partnership, and Casual marketing organization with The Sims Label to be

14476-444: The developer if the game is not meeting expectations. When each milestone is completed (and accepted), the publisher pays the developer an advance on royalties . Successful developers may maintain several teams working on different games for different publishers. Generally, however, third-party developers tend to be small, close-knit teams. Third-party game development is a volatile sector, since small developers may depend on income from

14630-417: The developers are the publisher's employees, their interests align with those of the publisher; the publisher may spend less effort ensuring that the developer's decisions do not enrich the developer at the publisher's expense. Activision in 1979 became the first third-party video game developer. When four Atari, Inc. programmers left the company following its sale to Warner Communications , partially over

14784-486: The development." Naughty Dog has complete freedom in basically every aspect of game design, and that also means that Sony Interactive Entertainment, the parent company, does not prevent the studio from any implementation of game elements. Naughty Dog is home to the ICE Team, one of Sony's World Wide Studios central technology groups. The term ICE originally stands for I nitiative for a C ommon E ngine which describes

14938-430: The duo to a three-title contract and fund the expansion of the company. After designer and producer Mark Cerny convinced Naughty Dog to create a character-based platform game that would use the 3D capabilities of the new systems, Naughty Dog created Crash Bandicoot for the PlayStation in 1996. Naughty Dog developed three Crash Bandicoot games over the next several years. After developing Crash Team Racing ,

15092-869: The end of March with each partner buying the other's shares. Electronic Arts Square was renamed as Electronic Arts K.K. and began self-publishing EA's titles in Japan from then on while Square Electronic Arts was folded under Square Enix's North American operations. In 2004, EA made a multimillion-dollar donation to fund the development of game production curriculum at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division . On February 1, 2006, Electronic Arts announced that it would cut worldwide staff by 5 percent. On June 20, 2006, EA purchased Mythic Entertainment , who are finished making Warhammer Online . After Sega's ESPN NFL 2K5 successfully grabbed market share away from EA's dominant Madden NFL series during

15246-416: The end of its financial quarter ending March 31, 2019, Wilson announced they were cutting about 350 jobs, or about 4% of its workforce, primarily from their marketing, publishing, and operations divisions. Wilson stated the layoffs were necessary to "address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead". EA announced in October 2019 that it would be returning to release games on Steam, starting with

15400-467: The entertainment industry (such as films and television ) require long working hours and dedication from their employees, such as willingness to relocate and/or required to develop games that do not appeal to their personal taste. The creative rewards of work in the entertainment business attracts labor to the industry, creating a competitive labor market that demands a high level of commitment and performance from employees. Industry communities, such as

15554-419: The film company United Artists , Steve Hayes opposed, saying, "We're not the artists, they [the developers] are..." This statement from Hayes immediately tilted sentiment towards Electronic Arts and the name was unanimously endorsed and adopted later in 1982. He recruited his original employees from Apple, Atari, Xerox PARC, and VisiCorp, and got Steve Wozniak to agree to sit on the board of directors. Hawkins

15708-591: The first edition of Spike 's VGX award show, Naughty Dog won the Studio of the Year award for its work on The Last of Us . On March 4, 2014, Uncharted lead writer Amy Hennig left the studio, with Uncharted 3 director Justin Richmond and The Last of Us lead artist Nate Wells leaving soon after. Later, it was revealed that The Last of Us would be released on the PlayStation 4 as a remastered version. In March 2017, Balestra announced that he would retire his role as co-president on April 3, 2017, after working at

15862-572: The first video game-specific union, Game Workers Unite Australia, was formed in December 2021 under Professionals Australia to become active in 2022. In Canada, in a historic move, video game workers in Edmonton unanimously voted to unionize for the first time in June 2022. In January 2023, after not being credited in The Last of Us HBO adaptation, Bruce Straley called for unionization of

16016-420: The following quarters. Furthermore, the visibility of this controversy led to debate at government levels around the world to determine if loot boxes were a form of gambling and if they should be regulated. In January 2018, EA announced eMLS, a new competitive league for EA Sports' FIFA 18 through its Competitive Gaming Division (CGD) and MLS . That same month, EA teamed up with ESPN and Disney XD in

16170-493: The game was met with a mixed reception, and EA sold one million fewer copies than their expected figure of 7.3 million. Also attributed to the stock plunge was the game's lack of the game mode Battle Royale , popularized by PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and then Fortnite . Stocks then surged 9.6% with the surprise release of Apex Legends , which garnered 25 million players in just one week, smashing Fortnite ' s record of 10 million players in two weeks. In advance of

16324-404: The gaming industry, while a 2017 IGDA survey found that the female demographic in game development had risen to about 20%. Taking into account that a 2017 ESA survey found 41% of video game players were female, this represented a significant gender gap in game development. The male-dominated industry, most who have grown up playing video games and are part of the video game culture , can create

16478-439: The ideas of treating software as an art form and calling the developers "software artists". Hence, the latest version of the business plan suggested the name "SoftArt". Hawkins and Melmon knew the founders of Software Arts , the creators of VisiCalc , and thought their permission should be obtained. Dan Bricklin did not want the name used because it sounded too similar (perhaps " confusingly similar ") to Software Arts ; however,

16632-457: The industry by working long hours. Because crunch time tends to come from a combination of corporate practices as well as peer influence, the term "crunch culture" is often used to discuss video game development settings where crunch time may be seen as the norm rather than the exception. The use of crunch time as a workplace standard gained attention first in 2004, when Erin Hoffman exposed

16786-431: The lack of respect that the new management gave to programmers, they used their knowledge of how Atari VCS game cartridges were programmed to create their own games for the system, founding Activision in 1979 to sell these. Atari took legal action to try to block the sale of these games, but the companies ultimately settled, with Activision agreeing to pay a portion of their sales as a license fee to Atari for developing for

16940-403: The main publishing side of the company rebranding to EA Games. The EA Sports brand was retained for major sports titles, the new EA Sports Big label would be used for casual sports titles with an arcade twist, and the full Electronic Arts name would be used for co-published and distributed titles. EA began to move toward direct distribution of digital games and services with the acquisition of

17094-672: The most famous piece of software available for Amiga platform. In addition, EA's Jerry Morrison conceived the idea of a file format that could store images, animations, sounds, and documents simultaneously, and would be compatible with third-party software. He wrote and released to the public the Interchange File Format , which soon became an Amiga standard. Other Amiga programs released by EA included Deluxe Music Construction Set , Instant Music and Deluxe Paint Animation . Some of them, most notably Deluxe Paint , were ported to other platforms. For Macintosh EA released

17248-559: The movement again called out for the industry to unionize. The movement argued that Telltale had not given any warning to its 250 employees let go, having hired additional staff as recently as a week prior, and left them without pensions or health-care options; it was further argued that the studio considered this a closure rather than layoffs, as to get around failure to notify required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 preceding layoffs. The situation

17402-475: The name concept was liked by all the attendees. Hawkins had also recently read a bestselling book about the film studio United Artists and liked the reputation that the company had created. Hawkins said everyone had a vote, but they would lose it if they went to sleep. Hawkins liked the word "electronic", and various employees had considered the phrases "Electronic Artists" and "Electronic Arts". When Gordon and others pushed for "Electronic Artists", in tribute to

17556-448: The nature of the video game culture. The industry also is recognized to have an ageism issue, discriminating against the hiring and retention of older developers. A 2016 IGDA survey found only 3% of developers were over 50 years old, while at least two-thirds were between 20 and 34; these numbers show a far lower average age compared to the U.S. national average of about 41.9 that same year. While discrimination by age in hiring practices

17710-1175: The new CEO of EA by September 2013. In April 2013, EA announced a reorganization which was to include dismissal of 10% of their workforce, consolidation of marketing functions which were distributed among the five label organizations, and subsumption of Origin operational leadership under the President of Labels. EA acquired the lucrative exclusive license to develop games within the Star Wars universe from Disney in May 2013, shortly after Disney's closure of its internal LucasArts game development in 2013. EA secured its license from 2013 through 2023, and began to assign new Star Wars projects across several of its internal studios, including BioWare , DICE , Visceral Games , Motive Studios , Capital Games and external developer Respawn Entertainment . In April 2015, EA announced that it would be shutting down various free-to-play games in July of that year, including Battlefield Heroes , Battlefield Play4Free , Need for Speed: World , and FIFA World . The reorganization and revised marketing strategy lead to

17864-477: The new entity. By fall 2012, both Muzyka and Zeschuk had chosen to depart the merged entity in a joint retirement announcement. On November 9, 2009, EA announced layoffs of 1,500 employees, representing 17% of its workforce, across a number of studios including EA Tiburon, Visceral Games , Mythic and EA Black Box . Also affected were "projects and support activities" that, according to Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown "don't make economic sense", resulting in

18018-540: The news, there have typically been followup discussions towards the potential to form a union. A survey performed by the International Game Developers Association in 2014 found that more than half of the 2,200 developers surveyed favored unionization. A similar survey of over 4,000 game developers run by the Game Developers Conference in early 2019 found that 47% of respondents felt the video game industry should unionize. In 2016, voice actors in

18172-433: The original purpose of the studio. The ICE Team focuses on creating core graphics technologies for Sony's worldwide first party published titles, including low level game engine components, graphics processing pipelines, supporting tools, and graphics profiling and debugging tools . The ICE Team also supports third party developers with a suite of engine components, and a graphics analysis, profiling, and debugging tool for

18326-587: The popular online gaming site Pogo.com in 2001. In 2009, EA acquired the London-based social gaming startup Playfish . In December 1997, Electronic Arts ended their Japanese publishing joint-venture with Victor Entertainment , entitled Electronic Arts Victor , and purchased out Victor's 35% stake in the venture. On May 1, 1998, Electronic Arts announced the formation of two joint-ventures with Square . The first; Electronic Arts Square K.K., would publish Electronic Arts' titles in Japan and also developed

18480-694: The present, being a de facto rate used for most digital storefronts for third-party developers to offer their games on the platform. In recent years, larger publishers have acquired several third-party developers. While these development teams are now technically "in-house", they often continue to operate in an autonomous manner (with their own culture and work practices). For example, Activision acquired Raven (1997); Neversoft (1999), which merged with Infinity Ward in 2014; Z-Axis (2001); Treyarch (2001); Luxoflux (2002); Shaba (2002); Infinity Ward (2003) and Vicarious Visions (2005). All these developers continue operating much as they did before acquisition,

18634-414: The primary differences being exclusivity and financial details. Publishers tend to be more forgiving of their own development teams going over budget (or missing deadlines) than third-party developers. A developer may not be the primary entity creating a piece of software, usually providing an external software tool which helps organize (or use) information for the primary software product. Such tools may be

18788-414: The public for the first time at E3 and went on to become one of the highest-selling titles for the PlayStation console, selling over 6.8 million copies. Naughty Dog continued to develop two more Crash Bandicoot games, with a spin-off Crash Team Racing kart racing game. By then the studio was looking to develop games for Sony and not be constrained by Universal Interactive. Since Universal held

18942-429: The publisher's wishes generally override those of the developer. Work for hire studios solely execute the publishers vision. The business arrangement between the developer and publisher is governed by a contract, which specifies a list of milestones intended to be delivered over a period of time. By updating its milestones, the publisher verifies that work is progressing quickly enough to meet its deadline and can direct

19096-415: The publishers. While this had some effects on a few games within the industry, it brought to the forefront the question of whether video game developers should unionize. A grassroots movement, Game Workers Unite , was established around 2017 to discuss and debate issues related to unionization of game developers. The group came to the forefront during the March 2018 Game Developers Conference by holding

19250-497: The reorganization was to empower the labels to operate more autonomously, streamline decision-making, increase creativity and quality, and get games into the market faster. This reorganization came after years of consolidation and acquisition by EA of smaller studios, which some in the industry blamed for a decrease in quality of EA titles. In 2008, at the DICE Summit, Riccitiello called the earlier approach of "buy and assimilate"

19404-575: The rights to the Crash Bandicoot series , Naughty Dog could not develop future games in its own right. The studio would be bought out by Sony in 2001 to avoid a repeat while it focused on developing the first game of the Jak and Daxter series. The Jak and Daxter games met similar success as the Crash Bandicoot games. During the development of Jak 3 and Jak X: Combat Racing games, Rubin and Gavin slowly transitioned Evan Wells and Stephen White to become co-presidents of Naughty Dog by

19558-447: The same day, CFO Chris Suh and chief experience officer Chris Bruzzo would be leaving the company at the end of the month, with the first leaving for another company while the other going to retire. In place of Suh as CFO came Stuart Canfield, a 20-year veteran of the company who had most recently been serving as SVP of enterprise finance and investor relations, while the company's new chief experiences officer became David Tinson, previously

19712-473: The shutdown of popular communities such as Battlefield News and the EA Community Team. These layoffs also led to the complete shutdown of Pandemic Studios . In October 2010, EA announced the acquisition of England-based iPhone and iPad games publisher Chillingo for US$ 20 million in cash. Chillingo published the popular Angry Birds for iOS and Cut the Rope for all platforms, but

19866-447: The skiing game they had. Rubin then created a new skiing game called Ski Crazed (originally titled Ski Stud ) within the weekend. The game played slowly, but Gavin reprogrammed the game to play quicker. Later, the game was gathered and published by Baudville, who bought the game from Jam Software for $ 250. Ski Crazed sold more than 1,000 copies. Rubin and Gavin created an Apple IIGS graphic adventure game titled Dream Zone , which

20020-440: The slogan "We see farther," was the first video game advertisement to feature software designers. EA shared lavish profits with their developers, which added to their industry appeal. The Amiga will revolutionize the home computer industry. It's the first home machine that has everything you want and need for all the major uses of a home computer, including entertainment, education and productivity. The software we're developing for

20174-409: The subscription price or services offered as part of a streamlining effort. In December 2020, EA placed a bid to buy Codemasters , a British developer of racing games, in a deal worth $ 1.2 billion, outbidding an earlier offer placed by Take-Two Interactive . The acquisition, agreed to by Codemasters, was completed by February 18, 2021, with all shares of Codemasters transferred to Codex Games Limited,

20328-545: The target of sexual harassment. This can be coupled from similar harassment from external groups, such as during the 2014 Gamergate controversy . Major investigations into allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct that went unchecked by management, as well as discrimination by employers, have been brought up against Riot Games , Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard in the late 2010s and early 2020s, alongside smaller studios and individual developers. However, while other entertainment industries have had similar exposure through

20482-584: The time the founders left the studio. White was replaced by Christophe Balestra after a year. In 2007, Naughty Dog began work on the Uncharted series, and made their first approach to realistic worlds and characters, in contrast to their Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter series, which featured fantastical worlds set in a fictional setting. The Uncharted franchise has been praised for its cinematic quality and technical proficiency, and has sold nearly 17 million copies worldwide as of April 2012. During

20636-576: The time. Another significant Amiga release (also initially available for Atari ST, later converted for other platforms) was Populous (1989) developed by Bullfrog Productions . It was a pioneering title in the genre that was later called " god games ". In 1990, Electronic Arts began producing console games for the Nintendo Entertainment System , after previously licensing its computer games to other console-game publishers. In 1991, Trip Hawkins stepped down as EA's CEO and

20790-484: The toxic nature of the video game culture. This racial diversity issue has similar ties to the gender one, and similar methods to result both have been suggested, such as improving grade school education, developing games that appeal beyond the white, male gamer stereotype, and identifying toxic behavior in both video game workplaces and online communities that perpetuate discrimination against gender and race. In regards to LGBT and other gender or sexual orientations,

20944-445: The use of A.I to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness. Since 1983 and the 1987 release of its Skate or Die! , Electronic Arts has respectively published and developed games, bundles, as well as a handful of earlier productivity software. As of April 2021, Electronic Arts' largest acquisition is the purchase of Glu Mobile , for $ 2.4 billion. Of the 39 companies acquired by EA, 20 are based in

21098-487: The use of crunch time at Electronic Arts , a situation known as the "EA Spouses" case. A similar "Rockstar Spouses" case gained further attention in 2010 over working conditions at Rockstar San Diego . Since then, there has generally been negative perception of crunch time from most of the industry as well as from its consumers and other media. Game development had generally been a predominately male workforce. In 1989, according to Variety , women constituted only 3% of

21252-508: The video game industry typically shares the same demographics as with the larger population based on a 2005 IGDA survey. Those in the LGBT community do not find workplace issues with their identity, though work to improve the representation of LGBT themes within video games in the same manner as with racial minorities. However, LGBT developers have also come under the same type of harassment from external groups like women and racial minorities due to

21406-678: The video game industry. Whereas some video game employees believe they should follow the craft-based model used by SAG-AFTRA which would unionize based on job function, others feel an industry-wide union, regardless of job position, would be better. Starting in 2021, several smaller game studios in the United States began efforts to unionize. These mostly involved teams doing quality assurance rather than developers. These studios included three QA studios under Blizzard Entertainment : Raven Software , Blizzard Albany , and Proletariat; and Zenimax Media 's QA team. Microsoft , which had previously acquired Zenimax and announced plans to acquire Blizzard via

21560-465: The work and did not contribute to JAM's operations, Rubin and Gavin bought back his share of the company (about US$ 100 ) within months and the acronym was redefined as "Jason and Andy's Magic". Rubin and Gavin chose to create software for the Apple II and decided to create a skiing game for their second title. During production of the game, Gavin accidentally copied bootleg games over the only copy of

21714-426: The work of Robert Ludlum into video gaming. As of early May 2009, the subsidiary studio EA Redwood Shores was known as Visceral Games. On June 24, 2009, EA announced it would merge two of its development studios, BioWare and Mythic into one single role-playing video game and MMO development powerhouse. The move placed Mythic under control of BioWare as Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk went in direct control of

21868-504: The workforce in video games is estimated to be from contract labor. Similar to other tech industries, video game developers are typically not unionized . This is a result of the industry being driven more by creativity and innovation rather than production, the lack of distinction between management and employees in the white-collar area, and the pace at which the industry moves that makes union actions difficult to plan out. However, when situations related to crunch time become prevalent in

22022-668: Was argued to be "exploitive", as Telltale had been known to force its employees to frequently work under "crunch time" to deliver its games. By the end of 2018, a United Kingdom trade union, Game Workers Unite UK, an affiliate of the Game Workers Unite movement, had been legally established. Following Activision Blizzard 's financial report for the previous quarter in February 2019, the company said that they would be laying off around 775 employees (about 8% of their workforce) despite having record profits for that quarter. Further calls for unionization came from this news, including

22176-775: Was concerned about the principally single-player game which would be difficult to monetize, as well as the slow pace of development. EA's original approach to the microtransactions in Star Wars Battlefront II sparked an industry-wide debate on the use of random-content loot boxes . While other games had used loot boxes, EA's original approach within Battlefront II from its early October 2017 launch included using such mechanics for pay to win gameplay elements, as well as locking various Star Wars characters behind expensive paywalls, leading several gaming journalists and players to complain. EA modified some of

22330-407: Was dedicated to publishing and distributing games developed by third-party developers. EA Partners began as EA Distribution, formed in 1997 and led by Tom Frisina, a former executive from Accolade and Three-Sixty who helped both companies find third-party developers as to provide publishing support for them. Frisina's early partners included Looking Glass Studios , MGM Interactive for the rights to

22484-451: Was determined to sell directly to buyers. Combined with the fact that Hawkins was pioneering new game brands, this made sales growth more challenging. Retailers wanted to buy known brands from existing distribution partners. Former CEO Larry Probst arrived as VP of Sales in late 1984 and helped expand the already successful company. This policy of dealing directly with retailers gave EA higher margins and better market awareness, key advantages

22638-480: Was harassed in any way". Neil Druckmann was promoted to co-president alongside Evan Wells on December 4, 2020; Alison Mori, formerly the director of operations, and Christian Gyrling, the former co-director of programming, were promoted to co-vice presidents in his place. On October 4, 2021, director of communications Arne Meyer announced that he had been promoted to co-vice president. In July 2022, Josh Scherr announced his departure from Naughty Dog after 21 years with

22792-463: Was intended to appeal to the PC market. Electronic Arts was The 3DO Company's primary partner in sponsoring their console, showcasing on it their latest games. With a retail price of US$ 700 (equivalent to $ 1,476.43 in 2023) compared to its competitors' $ 100, the console lagged in sales, and with the 1995 arrival to North America of Sony's PlayStation , a cheaper and more powerful alternative, combined with

22946-455: Was pleased with Way of the Warrior and signed Naughty Dog on to Universal Interactive Studios for three additional games. Rubin and Gavin devised a plan to create a three-dimensional action - platform game . Because the player would be forced to constantly look at the character's rear, the game was jokingly codenamed " Sonic 's Ass Game". Production of the game began in 1994, during which Naughty Dog expanded its number of employees and invented

23100-528: Was published by Electronic Arts for the Sega Genesis in 1991. Rubin and Gavin were joined on the title by programmer Vijay Pande , who would later become better known for orchestrating the distributed computing disease researching project known as Folding@home at Stanford University . In 1994, Rubin and Gavin produced the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer title Way of the Warrior and presented it to Mark Cerny of Universal Interactive Studios . Cerny

23254-543: Was released in 1988 and ported to the Atari ST , Amiga and PCs . In 1989, Rubin and Gavin released a game titled Keef the Thief , which was published by Electronic Arts for the Apple IIGS, Amiga and PCs. To make a fresh start and to dissolve their relationship with Baudville, Rubin and Gavin renamed Jam Software as Naughty Dog on September 9, 1989. Naughty Dog also created and developed Rings of Power , which

23408-465: Was released in 2007, followed by several sequels and spin-off titles. This lasted until Naughty Dog announced a new intellectual property for the PlayStation 3, The Last of Us , which was in development by a secondary team at the studio and released to critical acclaim in 2013 which spawned a franchise . The Last of Us Part II was released for the PlayStation 4 in 2020 to similar acclaim. Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin met as pre-teens in 1982 at

23562-561: Was retiring from the company. Current EA CEO Wilson took over as chairman. In June 2021, EA confirmed that they had suffered a data breach, with game and engine source code taken from their servers, including the source for the Frostbite Engine and FIFA 21 ; EA assured no player or user data had been obtained. Hackers that had taken the code had started selling it around on the dark web . The perpetuators of this breach began to extort EA for money in July, releasing small portions of

23716-407: Was succeeded by Larry Probst. Hawkins went on to found the now-defunct 3DO Company , but still remained EA's chair until July 1994. In October 1993, 3DO developed the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer , which at the time was the most powerful game console. Once a critic of game consoles, Hawkins had conceived a console that unlike its competitors would not require a first-party license to be marketed, and

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