Marketwatch Columnist: Did T2 Management Put Self-Interest Ahead of Shareholders?

@Belgarion89 - Good call indeed :) I just checked and stock prices are really going crazy! Up to 25.6 already!

Good call take two, at this rate your shares will be worth more than the offer before the end of the day :)

Bill Harris at Dubious Quality has a pretty good summation of the above article.

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2008/02/skullduggery.html

While I have no love for EA, they killed Looking Glass and Westwood, I won't
cry any tears for Take-Two. Between the Bioshock DRM fiasco, which I'm still pissed about(yes I am that petty) to the their apparent corrupt management I don't believe you can make a case for them as champions of the game community.

[...] via GamePolitics [...]

How could anyone find T2 refusing to be bought out by EA as a bad thing? By not letting EA turn T2 into a "progressively worse sequel" manufacturing machine, I think T2 is ABSOLUTELY looking out for its shareholders.

Eat it EA! You're not Activision!!!

This guy's complain that "Take-Two in effect threatened EA not to make the offer public by giving ZelnickMedia a chance to enrich itself, at the expense of shareholders, by granting restricted stock that will vest immediately if EA made the deal public…" - perhaps someone can correct me, but this sounds like the stock agreement has a poison pill provision. For those who don't know, such a provision allows for the board to grant a large number of new shares in order to thwart a hostile takeover. Suddenly EA has to pay a lot more money to buy a lot of these new shares if they want to control TT. And poison pills are not all that uncommon - they're common enough that there's a term for it. So TT having one shouldn't be all that peculiar. So, yes, I'm also going with 'drivel' on this one.

Quoted from the letter from EA to T2

"We do not intend to make this letter public and our offer will automatically terminate and be withdrawn in its entirety if any portion of this letter, or the existence of discussions between EA and Take-Two relating to a possible business combination, are disclosed to any person other than the directors and officers of Take-Two and its legal and financial advisors."

So T2 merely complied with the requests of EA who have since gone back on their word and even published a website with their hopes to buy out T2. Obviously Greenberg didn't do his research...

Yeah, I'd say Take Two did the right thing. Even if the money was a good offer (and given that Take Two's stock price just rose, probably not) I don't think selling out would help them creatively.

And I'm almost certain EA doesn't want to deal with Jack Thompson every day.

Also, the fact that the share prices have gone up so much so quickly kinda makes this guys point completely invalid...

I'm sure the shareholders are very happy right now :)

They simply believe that take 2 will be worth far more than that after grand theft auto 4 goes on sale.

This here.

I'm curious as to how high they expect it to go after GTAIV. I'm anxious to find out how high it does go.

This entire deal is just EA trying to make a quick and easy profit. EA knows that TakeTwo's stock is going to EXPLODE after GTA IV comes out. EA was paying what would be a good price today so they could make a metric ton of money after GTA IV is released. Here's the deal though: why should TakeTwo let EA get in on all the GTA IV money when TakeTwo has done all the work?

On a personal note a company that doesn't let itself be bought out by EA just jumped up a notch in my book. Just say no to a company that ruins developers.

EA ruins games, not accepting the offer was the best thing for everyone except the one-sequel-a-year company EA where every game made this year is exactly like one made last year.

truly trying to buy a company right as a massive game is about to be realised is lame. I had to laugh at all the talk EA did during the Mass Effect Controversey "The hard working employees who created our game" what work did EA do except buy em' at the last minute to get that fat Mass Effect cash.

T2 did a very good thing, by not pressuring to EA, it has given a clear signal to EA, that you can't buy eyerything. If T2 were to become an asset of Ea, then they would have little to no competition in the sports genre, and if there is one genre that need more innovation, it's the sports area.

@ Tristram - Published or made? There is a big difference... As far as "made" goes, I'd say Fight Night Round 3 was the most recent one that I really liked. As far as published goes, they most recently did Mass Effect... so the definitely bring out some quality games.

However, having said all that I am inclined to point out what I said in my last two posts:

TAKE TWO'S SHARE PRICE IS ALREADY WORTH MORE THAN $25!

So you can stop all the speculation. That deal is dead in the water now that the share price has climbed so steeply.

So no Take Two for EA :)

@L42yB

I typically say EAdoes a lot right, but they do a whole hell of a lot worse.

"There can be no certainty that in the future EA or any other buyer would pay the same high premium we are offering today."

Well... he was right.... he'll have to dish out a WAY higher premium to entertain another offer.

Take Two's shares are indeed more than $25 per share right now and that number keeps going up the closer we get to launch date for GTA IV. How much would T2 stand to lose should they accept the deal? Let's kick a little math. EA offers $2,000,000,000 for a complete takeover of T2, which works out to $25/share. That's 80,000,000 shares. At this very moment, T2's price per share works out to $26.40 (Source: GP Ticker), which leaves a remainder of $1.40 from the $25 that EA was offering per share. Doesn't seem like much of a lowball, but when you multiply that remainder by the amount of shares, it amounts to a whopping $112,000,000. That's a huge amount of money for any company to consider losing, regardless of size. I'd say that was a pretty good call on T2's part.

That being said, Jack Thompson will probably try and find some legal precedent to use against them in this whole thing. Maybe this time his motion will be submitted in the form of a pop-up book.

Id rather EA not own T2. Overcommercialization will kill the innovative spirit of the game industry.

@Father Time:

This is business. Morality doesn't enter into the minds of those running public companies.

but hey we'd get to look forward GTA 2008/09/10/11/12/13 Winter special/13 Summer special/14 and 15

This guy on CNBC just pretty much said programmers aren't important, just the customers... I'm sure he means the same thing for everyone else involved as well.

Yeah, the guys responsible for building a franchise since GTAIII and doing much of the work (including the art guys) aren't important. *rolls eyes* GTA is dead if the key people that have been behind it since GTAIII are gone.

This doesn't have much to do with GTA I don't think, this is about EA Sports trying to get the monopoly.

However, I imagine T2 would try to hold out until after the GTAIV release, which will more than likely see a jump in share prices.

@ PheonixZero

Some other guy on CNBC just proved his utter lack of knowledge of the game market by talking about GTA 1 and 2.