Originally Posted by IGN
Electronic Arts was apparently prepared to pay up to $1 billion in order to acquire Valve, according to a new "report".
The New York Times claims to have seen a report which lists the various opportunities Gabe Newell has had to sell the company in the past.
"Valve has been pursued over the years by Electronic Arts, which would very likely have valued Valve at well over $1 billion had the talks progressed that far," it explains.
The article goes on to say the claims come courtesy of "two people with knowledge of the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private".
Why said talks broke down isn't clear, especially given that EA's COO Peter Moore recently voiced his support for the company, describing them as being "on the cutting edge of the future of this industry". It may have something to do with Valve co-founder Gabe Newell, who has apparently long been convinced that the company would "disintegrate" if it was ever bought by another company.
"It’s way more likely we would head in that direction than say, ‘Let’s find some giant company that wants to cash us out and wait two or three years to have our employment agreements terminate,’ he said.
Had the deal gone through, EA would have gotten quite the bargain; Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter estimates that Valve would today be valued at around $2.5 billion, mainly thanks to its Steam digital distribution service. The company is also believed to make far more money from Steam than it does from actual sales of its own games.
This number only looks set to go up, especially with the recent news that the company will be "jumping in" to hardware development.
