14 DAY TRIAL // Anonymous sources that were quoted by the New York Times report that video game publisher Electronic Arts has tried to purchase developer Valve for 1 billion dollars (783.5 million Euro).
Gabe Newell, who is the leader of Valve, has stated that he would prefer to see his company disintegrate rather than sell it to another big player in the video games industry.
He added, “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’.”
It seems that before the two companies agreed on the 1 billion dollars (783.5 million Euro) figure extensive talks took place between them.
It’s not clear why the acquisition process then failed, considering that a price had been agreed upon.
The relationship between Valve and Electronic Arts is a complicated one and includes intense rivalry in some areas and collaboration in others.
Valve has selected EA to be the distributor and retail partner for the console-based version of the recent Portal 2.
At the same time, EA chose to launch Origin, a digital distribution service that is set to compete with Valve’s own Steam.
After the new Electronic Arts service was launched, a number of games from the publisher were banished from Steam for breaching the Terms of Service that banned the use of in-game shops.
Valve is best known for the Steam digital distribution service, but the company has recently been talking about potentially going into the hardware space.
The developer has attacked the coming Windows 8 Operating System from Microsoft for being too limiting for the PC and rumors are suggesting that the company might be ready to launch a Steam-powered gaming OS while also introducing a new SteamBox to allow anyone with a television set to run games.