UK Video Games Designer Codemasters To Be Sold To Take-Two
The renowned Southam-based UK video games company Codemasters is planning to sell off to US mega games company Take-Two. Just some of the popular race games provided by Codemasters include Dirt Rally and Formula 1.
The announcement was made on 6 November at the press release of the brand’s latest Dirt title.
About Codemasters
Codemasters employs 450 workers in three UK studios and Asia, and has been operational for the past 30 years.
The independent brand is proud of its global leadership in the development of racing games and is looking forward to a happy relationship with Take-Two.
The deal offered by Take-Two has valued Codemasters at £739mn ($973m), and will shortly be recommended to the brand’s shareholders.
More On The Take-Two Deal
Codemasters announced the deal on the day it released its new game Dirt 5 (6 November).
Although Codemasters is currently focused on racing games, the brand has also worked in several other games franchise arenas, including:
- – the Dizzy platform games for the Commodore and Spectrum
- – several more sports-related games
The brand’s success with racing games was cemented by their 1990s franchise in Micro Machines.
Some other popular publications from Codemasters include the Jonah Lomu Rugby game, Operation Flashpoint, Overlord and Brian Lara Cricket.
This buyout values the existing shares at £1.20 each in cash, alongside an additional £3.65 in Take-Two shares for every single Codemasters share.
The deal is not yet fully finalised, as a firm offer still has to be tabled. The current deal was made public by the media prior to the emergence of a final deal.
The Take-Two management team stated that:
“Take-Two believes that the combination of Take-Two and Codemasters would bring together two world-class interactive entertainment portfolios, with a highly complementary fit between 2K and Codemasters in the racing genre.”
The 2K publisher is already the owner of a number of popular sports titles, so the addition of the globally recognised racing titles will be a real feather in the Take-Two cap.
The Take-Two Interactive board can take until 4 December 2020 to announce the firm intention to buy out Codemasters and the final terms of the deal on offer.