EA Buys Mobile Developer Industrial Toys

EA has a reputation for a lot of things, and very few of them are good. One of their most prominent – and fearful – reputations is something of a grim reaper of the games industry, buying out small studios, wringing a few games out of them, then discarding the corpse on the side of the road to be picked clean by the vultures. So when a studio is purchased by EA, it’s rarely cause to celebrate, as most people treat it like something of a death sentence.

And I’m afraid another studio was just put in death row, ladies and gentlemen, although I’ll wager it’s a studio you don’t even know exists, although you might know who created it.

The studio in question is called Industrial Toys, which was founded in 2012 by Alex Seropian: a Bungie developer back in the 1990s who helped make both Marathon and the first Halo game before quitting due to “frustration with the game-making process.” Industrial Toys, then, focused on high-quality mobile games, such as Midnight Star and Midnight Rises.

The growth of mobile games is astonishing and while there’s plenty of content out there, there isn’t enough great content for core gamers — we’re committed to changing that. Industrial Toys is an independent game studio focused on creating great mobile games for core gamers.

As for why they were purchased by EA? That’s anyone’s guess, although it’s safe to say it’s probably to continue their expansion in the mobile world. It’s unlikely they plan on using Industrial Toys to help make, say, more Command and Conquer content, but I could see them trying their hand at some kind of Dead Space mobile game and giving Industrial Toys the job of actually making it good.

I’m not sure this is the kind of partnership we’ll be hearing a lot from in the future, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.