Is there an end in sight for the industry's merger mania? | Opinion
Rob Fahey
Contributing Editor
Friday 27th May 2022
It's apparent to even the most casual observer that the games business is going through an unprecedented spate of consolidations among major companies.
The acquisition of Zynga by Take-Two just set a new high water mark for the value of deals within the industry, but we already know that the record will be broken in the coming year when Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard King finally closes.
The trend isn't entirely new; one could argue that the current wave of consolidation began almost a decade ago when major publishers started buying successful mobile gaming firms in a desperate attempt to stay abreast of this enormous new market segment, and a variety of market pressures have kept the pace of major acquisitions high ever since then.
It's worth interrogating this trend more deeply, though, and asking why exactly it's happening right now -- and what, if anything, might bring it to an end.
This seems especially relevant in a week where we've discovered that Electronic Arts has been aggressively courting potential acquirers from across the media and technology markets, while Ubisoft apparently has a price tag in mind should anyone come knocking, though the Guillemot family is also floating the idea of taking the French publisher private, which is either a fairly typically iron-fisted move from the company's founders, a strategy to push potential suitors' valuations higher, or a bit of both.
This consolidation trend may have started years ago, but back then companies like EA and Ubisoft saw themselves as acquirers, not acquisition targets
Rumours about Sony following up its recently announced acquisition of Bungie with a buyout of a major Japanese publisher also
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