Take-Two to acquire FarmVille publisher in most expensive gaming deal ever

By Otto Kratky Published January 10, 2022

Take-Two Interactive, the massive gaming publishing company behind Rockstar and Private Division, is expanding into the mobile gaming market with a record-setting acquisition. The company is currently set to acquire Zynga games, the mobile gaming giant behind Farmville, for a mind-boggling $12.7 billion.

The purchase, being made with a mix of cash and stocks, marks the most expensive acquisition ever in the gaming industry, beating out Chinese media conglomerate Tencent’s 2016 acquisition of Supercell, which cost the company 8.6 billion at the time. Take-Two’s deal likewise trumps other recent notable acquisitions, including Microsoft’s purchase of ZeniMax Media in 2020 for $7.5 billion, which gave the tech giant the rights to The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Fallout, and Dishonored franchises.

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While Zynga may not be a household name for anyone playing games on consoles or a gaming PC, the company is behind some of the biggest mobile games on the market. Best known for developing FarmVille, which gained an enormous amount of popularity on Facebook, Zynga now leads the mobile gaming market with games like Words With Friends, Golf Rival, and more. According to a press release, Zynga’s games have been downloaded over 4 billion times on mobile devices.

With its acquisition of Zynga, which is planned to be completed on June 30, 2022, Take-Two is poised to make an aggressive push into the mobile gaming market. “This strategic combination brings together our best-in-class console and PC franchises, with a market-leading, diversified mobile publishing platform that has a rich history of innovation and creativity,” said Take-Two Interactive chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick.

Take-Two’s specific plans for Zynga are still unclear. While the mobile giant will be a vehicle for Take-Two to have a larger slice of the mobile gaming market pie, just how the company will actually achieve that is a mystery. It’s entirely possible that, if the acquisition is completed, we could see more Grand Theft Auto games on mobile devices in the near future.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Otto Kratky is a freelance writer with many homes. You can find his work at Digital Trends, GameSpot, and Gamepur. If he's…

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Gaming

Fae Farm is shaping up to be the coziest farming game ever

Two players farm outside during autumn in Fae Farm.

Thanks to games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, self-described "cozy games" have become much more popular. Often nonviolent and relaxing, there are whole showcases dedicated to this type of game. Dauntless developer Phoenix Labs is putting its own spin on the growing genre with its multiplayer farming game Fae Farm, which was announced during September's Nintendo Direct.
Although cozy isn't the first adjective I'd use to describe Dauntless, Isaac Epp, the game's director, believes that Fae Farm ultimately achieves a similar goal to that game by going the wholesome route. "While Dauntless was a much more hardcore, high-action experience, at the heart of it, this is still about us building a game that is fun to play with the people that you love," he tells Digital Trends.
Fae Farm - Announcement Trailer - Nintendo Switch
Digital Trends got a hands-off look at Fae Farm earlier this month and came away intrigued. While farming and cozy games are a dime a dozen nowadays, Fae Farm's comfortable aesthetic and a couple of clever design decisions make me want to give this game a shot with friends when it launches.
Cozy crops
During the hands-off demo, I saw Epp and other developers play through different parts of Fae Farm at various stages of progression. To start, we began in a quaint early-game farm with just a batch of planted crops and a small house to its name. He then did some light farming, which played similarly to most other games in the genre, although one unique feature immediately caught my attention. Typically, players have to go into submenus to switch between tools as they tend to their land in most farming games. That isn't an issue in Fae Farm, as one button press will do.
Pressing the same button will cut down a tree with an ax or water crops with a watering can, contextually equipping itself. Players will only have to worry about equipping tools themselves if they want to use their fishing pole, net, or wand at specific locations. I also saw Fae Farm's multiplayer in action, as up to four players can independently farm and explore simultaneously. This is also seamless, as new players who drop into a game world will be caught up with the items and story details necessary to be on the same level as their peers.
These might seem like small features, but they demonstrated how Fae Farm is meant to be an approachable and relaxing experience that wants to take any frustrating roadblocks out of the player's way starting in just its opening moments. As the demo continued, I saw Epp accept quests from NPCs, catch bugs in a net Animal Crossing-style, fish off a bridge into a river, and do some light platforming around the game's world.

"We really wanted to make this beautiful space where when you're walking around, you can really see all the artists' hands that went into making it and elevating the genre where we could," Epp explained. "We want the whole world to feel like a play space, not just playable within rails."
After that, the developers came upon the nearby town's market, where they could speak and build relationships with NPCs and sell crops and other resources gathered. Soon thereafter, they obtained a wand and jumped forward to one of the game's dungeons, where players could explore, solve puzzles, fight enemies, and collect resources. In keeping with the cozier and more lighthearted nature of Fae Farm, Epp says enemies are more mischievous than evil and menacing.
The influence of action-adventure series like The Legend of Zelda as undeniable in this dungeon segments. They should provide a nice change of pace for those who are getting a little tired of farming. Still, progressing through the game and enhancing a character's magical abilities will make farming a little less tedious. This became clear when the developers jumped forward to a late-game farmstead, where they had advanced skills that allowed them to water more crops at once.
Wholesome homestead
Like most farming sims, exploring dungeons and tending to the homestead will require balancing the player's health, energy, and mana daily. Players can craft potions and other items like lunch boxes to give players an extra boost in any of those three areas, though. It's a gameplay loop as old as this farming sim genre itself, and Fae Farm looks to feature a solid implementation of that formula. After that, the developers went inside their new house, which was much bigger and more detailed than before.

Gaming

The next game from the Outriders studio loses Take-Two as its publisher

Outriders

Outriders developer People Can Fly and publisher Take-Two Interactive have parted ways with each other on Project Dagger, a new action-adventure game. The game has been in development for the past two years. People Can Fly will also retain the rights to Project Dagger and will continue working on it. Whether the game will find another publisher or be self-published is up in the air right now.

"I assume we will part on good terms, and I don’t see reasons why we couldn’t work with Take-Two on some other project in the future," says People Can Fly Ceo Sebastian Wojciechowski in a statement.

Gaming

2K reportedly publishing two Lego sports games

Two characters race in a Lego Worlds neighborhood.

Publishing giant 2K is partnering with Lego to produce multiple sports games, including a soccer title that is set to release later this year, according to a report from Video Games Chronicle.

Set to launch close to the start of this year's FIFA World Cup, 2K's upcoming soccer game is reportedly being developed by Sumo Digital, which has previously developed Crackdown 3, along with numerous entries in the Sonic Racing franchise. It's somewhat ironic then that 2K's second Lego game will be an open-world racing title developed by Visual Concepts, which itself has made multiple sports titles for 2K, including NBA 2K22 and WWE 2K22. The 2K Lego racing game will reportedly release in 2023. According to VGC's sources, a third Lego sports game based on a major sports franchise is also in development.