After the 45 days have passed, and if no other company presents a better deal, Zynga should end up under Take-Two’s wing. However, that will only happen during the first quarter of the publisher’s 2023 fiscal year, after stockholders approve the deal. The Board of Directors of both companies have already unanimously agreed on the terms of the acquisition. For Take-Two, Zynga will work as the gateway to mobile and social media gaming, allowing the publisher to bring some of its biggest franchises to more platforms. Take-Two Interactive owns several successful properties including Borderlands, Red Dead, Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, and Sid Meier’s Civilization, just to name a few. Zynga has also proven to be a competent game publisher and developer, launching the world-famous Ville series including FarmVille, CityVille and YoVille. Other titles and game series belonging to the social game company are CSR Racing, Words With Friends, Empires & Puzzles, and Tangle Master 3D.
“We are thrilled to announce our transformative transaction with Zynga, which significantly diversifies our business and establishes our leadership position in mobile, the fastest growing segment of the interactive entertainment industry,” said Strauss Zelnick, chairman and CEO of Take-Two. “We believe that we will deliver significant value to both sets of stockholders, including $100 million of annual cost synergies within the first two years post-closing and at least $500 million of annual Net Bookings opportunities over time.” Zynga’s acquisition by Take-Two Interactive comes over a year after the publisher tried to acquire the racing games developer Codemasters for ~$1 billion. However, that didn’t happen, as EA ended up closing the deal with the game developer for $1.2 billion. At $12.7 billion, the acquisition of Zynga could well be the most expensive in the history of video games. Before this one, Tencent acquired a majority stake of Supercell for $8.57 billion, and more recently, Microsoft bought Bethesda for $7.5 billion.
