EA Buys Bungie Founder's Indie Game Studio

Mega-publisher Electronic Arts has acquired an indie studio with a big name attached to it. The Battlefield and FIFA publisher has announced that it bought Industrial Toys, which was founded in 2012 by Bungie co-founder and former CEO Alex Seropian.

Seropian is a games industry veteran. After leaving Bungie, he experimented with outsourced game development at Wideload Games. After that, he led Disney's games division through a time that saw the closure of Propaganda Games and Black Rock, as well as the cancellation of Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned. In 2012, he founded Industrial Toys, which creates "mobile games for core gamers." The studio has released two games so far: Midnight Star and Midnight Star: Renegade, featuring music from System of a Down's Serj Tankian.

Industrial Toys' 14 staffers will join EA under the company's Worldwide Studios label. Little is known about the team's future output, but EA said in a statement that the team will continue to "focus on bringing new game concepts to life."

"We're thrilled to have them join our studio organization, pursue new ideas together, and bring amazing new games to our players," EA Worldwide Studios Group GM Samantha Ryan said in a statement.

Terms of the buyout were not disclosed. This is just EA's latest studio acquisition, following its buyout of Titanfall studio Respawn in 2017 for more than $450 million.