Take-Two Interactive to acquire social game developer Zynga in $12.7 billion deal

Take-Two Interactive, the video game publisher that owns Rockstar and 2K Games, is set to acquire social game developer Zynga in a deal valued at $12.7 billion (via The Wall Street Journal). The cash and stock transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023, pending regulatory approval.

Take-Two Interactive’s acquisition of Zynga marks the company’s foray into the mobile game market. Take-Two is behind some of the most well-known game series, including Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, BioShock, Borderlands, and NBA 2K.

Meanwhile, Zynga has a pretty impressive portfolio of its own, defining a genre by planting some of its earliest games, like FarmVille, on Facebook. The mobile game developer also created the ultra-popular Words With Friends, which eventually made its way to Messenger. The company is also set to roll out an Among Us-like game on Snapchat, called Revamp.

“Combining Zynga’s expertise in mobile and next-generation platforms with Take-Two’s best-in-class capabilities and intellectual property will enable us to further advance our mission to connect the world through games,” said Frank Gibeau, the CEO of Zynga.

Take-Two’s $12.7 billion acquisition is one of the biggest in video game history, by a pretty big margin — ahead of even Microsoft’s $7.5 billion purchase of Bethesda, which was finalized last March, and Tencent’s $8.57 billion acquisition of a majority stake in Supercell.