Electronic Arts continues to press its now laughable attempt to take over Take Two but a much bigger prize might be looming just over the horizon for the publisher. Valve, which has been quietly establishing a good developer - publisher relationship with Electronic Arts, might be interested in being acquired by the company.

Doug Lombardi, who is the vice president of Valve, told Gamasutra that his company is "happy to have that conversation" if a firm is interested. They are very clear on their limitations as a company and on the fact that they need help in dealing with some issues that are connected to game development. After all, the guys at Valve are more concerned about actually making games than distributing them.

Lombardi also said that Electronic Arts is a very good publisher and that "We had been socialized to doing so many things ourselves, whether it's box creation, funding our own development, etcetera so that when we came to meet with folks about a distribution deal, and I use that phrase intentionally, we were looking for somebody to do a certain set of services that we didn't want to do, or weren't versed in, and nothing more", emphasizing that the relationship between the companies is not evolving towards something different at the moment.

It seems that the people at Valve were so impressed by the "evil empire" image of Electronic Arts that they "set up the deal so that it turned out that if EA was this evil empire, that it wasn't going to last forever" but they "haven't seen the boogeyman". Well, it appears that the guys at Valve are not aware that before the prey is killed, it must be first lured.

Left 4 Dead is the next Valve project, after The Orange Box, which will be brought to gamers by Electronic Arts.