On August 21, 2012, PopCap laid off 50 employees in North America in a move to address a shift to mobile and free-to-play games and evaluated ceasing operations of its Dublin studio.
On July 12, 2011, Electronic Arts announced it was acquiring PopCap for $650 million with an additional $100 million stock option. Their first creation was the game Unpleasant Horse. On April 5, 2011, PopCap announced the creation of a new subsidiary, 4th and Battery, started in order to create "edgier" games. PopCap hosted several games on and other websites, online and premium, until 2014, when they stopped offering games from their site. PopCap's premium games list on their website are mixed with other games from other developers/distributors. After these acquisitions, the PopCap logo was rebranded, dropping the "Games" portion.
One week prior, the company acquired the Chicago-based development house Retro64, founded by Mike Boeh, which is best known for their retro-arcade action and puzzle titles. PopCap began another round of expansion in July 2007 by buying other casual game developers including the creators of an online consumer portal, SpinTop Games. In early 2006, PopCap International was opened, based in Dublin, Ireland, working on product localization, mobile games development, marketing, sales and business development. The Sprout team helped PopCap to make a sequel to the game, Feeding Frenzy 2: Shipwreck Showdown, with Gwertzman becoming the Director of Business Development at PopCap. Sprout Games is the creator of the game Feeding Frenzy. The company expanded in 2005 with the acquisition of Sprout Games, a Seattle-based casual games developer company like PopCap Games, founded by James Gwertzman. Their first game as PopCap was Bejeweled, a gem-swapping game, which was supported on all major platforms and awarded by Computer Gaming World Hall Of Fame in 2002.
James Gwertzman representing PopCap Games at the 2007 Montreal International Games Summit
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