Electronic Arts buys GameFly's Israel unit

GameFly's Israel team Photo: PR
GameFly's Israel team Photo: PR

The Caesarea office and its team of 50 will become gaming giant EA's Israel development center.

Computer gaming giant Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) announced that it has acquired the cloud gaming technology assets and personnel of a subsidiary of GameFly Inc. in Israel. The team based in Caesarea develops streaming technology for cloud games. The acquisition including GameFly's staff of 50 in Caesarea will become EA's Israel development center.

Following the acquisition, the Israeli team will retain its current structure and continue working on developing technologies for EA. However, EA has not acquired the gaming streaming technology that GameFly's Israel unit has developed. EA will develop its own services based on the technology that it has acquired.

GameFly's Israel unit is based on the 2015 acquisition of Israeli startup Playcast for $30 million. Playcast was turned into GameFly's Israel development center. The steaming technology developed in Caesarea served GameFly in creating a platform rather like Netflix's except for streaming computer games.

EA CTO Ken Moss said, “Cloud gaming is an exciting frontier that will help us to give even more players the ability to experience games on any device from anywhere. We’re thrilled to bring this talented team’s expertise into EA as we continue to innovate and expand the future of games and play.”

EA added that with this acquisition, the company is adding to its strategic focus on advanced technologies that will give players more freedom to access the games they want, and enable the delivery of next-generation experiences at scale. The team based in Caesarea, Israel, will join EA’s functional teams, including the central technology organization that is responsible for developing and operating the cutting-edge platform that powers EA’s leading games and services.

The acquisition closed in May 2018. No financial details about the deal were disclosed.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 23, 2018

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2018

GameFly's Israel team Photo: PR
GameFly's Israel team Photo: PR
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