A financial document says that shareholders representing 98.61% of Codies shares voted in favour of the buyout. That’s a big yes. The deal isn’t fully finalised, with a court hearing to sanction the scheme to follow on the 16th of February, but this was a big step. It’s been a strange race. Take-Two’s bid got far enough along for them to make big statements about how great it’ll be, then they backed down after EA rolled up. EA’s bid values Codemasters at a bit over £900 million ($1200m). “In an industry where IP is deeply valuable, the union of EA and Codemasters will create a global leader in racing entertainment,” EA said in December. They added that they believe they “can help accelerate Codemasters’ performance by leveraging EA’s deep genre expertise in live services operations, data science and game analytics, as well as access to EA’s central development and technology teams across an array of disciplines, including art and motion capture, quality verification, compliance and localisation.” The consolidation of the games industry trundles along, pausing at the traffic lights to wait for a green.
