Publishers Electronic Arts today has announced that they have acquired the studio behind Titanfall and Titanfall 2, Respawn Entertainment. While Respawn has always exclusively developed games for EA in the past, they were independent of the publishing giants until now. With the acquisition, EA now owns the Titanfall IP and any subsequent projects henceforth.

Through a press release, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said “We’ve seen firsthand the world-class caliber of Respawn as a development studio with incredible vision, deep talent and an inspiring creative mindset,”.

“Our longtime partnership is grounded in a shared desire to push the boundaries and deliver extraordinary and innovative new experiences for players around the world. Together, we’ve brought this to life in the Titanfall franchise, and now with the Respawn team joining EA, we have exciting plans to accomplish even more amazing things in the future.” he added.

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CEO of Respawn, Vince Zampella via statement on the company’s website assured that he remains in charge of the studio and that no layoffs will happen. “While it wasn’t necessary, going with EA made a lot of sense,” he said. “With Titanfall and Star Wars, EA has been a great development partner that supports us and doesn’t interfere with our process for making games or studio culture. EA will provide us with more resources, access to new technologies, and expertise that we can tap into to that will help us make better games, and Respawn will retain the same creative freedom and culture we’ve always had. We’ve been talking closely with the leadership at EA and we share their values and vision for the future of being a developer-focused company that puts the players first.” he quipped.

The deal sees EA cough out $151 million in cash for Respawn, as well as up to $164 million in equity. Performance milestones could see the cash figure rise as high as an additional $140 million.

Respawn Entertainment was started by industry veteran and former CEO of Call of Duty developers, Infinity Ward after they were controversially dismissed by Activision in 2010. EA published the studio’s first game, Titanfall and its sequel, Titanfall 2 last year. While some may question the move by EA and Respawn in regards to the acquisition, we feel it is a positive step for the studio, and hopefully result in a much more solid backing from EA for the studio’s games going forward. Titanfall 2 was released to overwhelmingly positive reviews but it wasn’t fairly reflected sales-wise mostly due to its release window which was in between Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and EA’s own Battlefield 1.