It was if some EA secretary had simply gotten 'Press Release Template A: Small Acquisitions' out of her corporate closet, inserted Firemint's name and a few other tiny details and then hit the 'send' button, ticking off 'Meet mandatory disclosure obligations' on her little corporate checklist before making a cup of weak tea and staring out the window into a vacant parking lot. Perhaps EA's mergers and acquisitions legal team did the same thing with the acquisition agreement itself.
Later yesterday, Murray took a few minutes out to publish his own statement about the deal.
'We have heard some pretty funny questions coming through,' he wrote, noting he wanted to cover off some basic facts - notably, Firemint would stay in Australia, it would operate with 'very high levels of autonomy' and he would continue to run the company, with everything being more or less 'business as usual'.
Don't worry, everyone - the kids will be fine.
Now some of what Murray wrote makes complete sense. He noted that Firemint had already been working with EA, even before its Flight Control success over the past few years - making a stack of mobile games for the company - including titles such as Madden, the Sims DJ and Need for Speed Most Wanted. And so an acquisition by EA shouldn't be considered that unusual. 'I would forgive people for believing that we didn't exist before Flight Control, but we've been in business since 1999,' Murray said.
But some of it just sounds plain weird.
Murray noted that Firemint needed EA's help 'in order to win'. EA, he claimed, would free up Firemint to focus on 'the creative stuff that really matters'. The video game giant believes in Firemint, Murray added, trusts the studio and will provide resources to help it develop great games.
The only problem with this is that EA has in the past demonstrated the complete opposite approach to what Murray is describing, when dealing with the studios which consist of the churning factory of EA products.
