The LA Times and others are reporting that EA has acquired Shawn Fanning’s social-network-gaming startup Rupture for around $30 million. We reported this deal a month ago.
The first sentence of the LA Times story: “Shawn Fanning…has finally earned some money.”
The title of our post a month ago: “Shawn Fanning Finally Gets A Real Payday…”
They did add a link to the story giving us some credit for breaking it, albeit with a statement suggesting we hit the trigger too soon: “When the widely read blog TechCrunch wrote two weeks ago that gaming giant EA had bought Rupture for a reported $30 million, it wasn’t true. But it is now.”
Here’s the very short EA press release on the deal.
sincerest form of flattery
But didnt EA just announce this today?
I do think this highlights a big difference between old and new media. Old media has no problems writing a story broken by another publication without any attribution.
It certainly happens in the blogoshpere but it is much more controversial.
Judo - it doesn’t happen in the legitimate blogosphere.
Sonsabitches!
Thanks Mike for pointing out again how bad the LA times is.
I don’t think many people would mind if latimes.com redirected to news.google.com
Nice of TC to crack the story early. These other outlets merely seem to have received the press release and as the LA Times did - incorporated more of an article because of Fanning’s name.
Similar in vein to Rupture itself and this deal with EA. Its an app to track your WoW character’s stats. It will fit nicely with EA’s MMO portfolio once the Rupture/EA team build it out. Warhammer and Spore come to mind. However, look at the technology and look at the actual traffic of Rupture - some one or some people at EA are hiding under a wool blanket.
Congrats to Fanning & Ron - may we see you in another VW commercial, this time together!
To be fair, the deal wasn’t closed when you posted it!
EA doesn’t have much of an MMO library. They have a couple (Spore isn’t an MMO), but the small presence they have in the MMO space in no way justifies this acquisition of tech. It’s pretty clear they’re planning something broader. Most likely something like a social portal/stat tracking service for ALL EA titles. Not unlike what Microsoft has done with Xbox.com.
Are they accusing Techcrunch of being “fortunetellers”?
@Justin - Possible, but looking at the space, GameStrata (www.gamestrata.com), Raptr (www.raptr.com) and a few other sites would seem to hold some water here as better platforms for a social portal with stat tracking.
Rupture did an overhaul in Dec/Jan to be more of a news feed service for game events. Didn’t do much for traffic. I hope there was a lot more behind the scenes that was available to the public.
@9, perhaps Techcrunch is so influential, that the mere mention of an outcome actually causes it to happen.
With that in mind, MA, say I won ONE BILLION DOLLARS (said with Dr. Evil impersonation).
This is why i read your site and NOT the LA Times!! They are so yesterday!!
“When the widely read blog TechCrunch wrote two weeks ago…”
Original story went up on May 8th. That was a long two weeks.
You are the best. And you are my man.
Are TechCrunch making a bid for Oracle?
please help me promote my site: http://www.newsendorser.com
upload your videos, be a member and invite friends.
your help means a lot to us! Thanks!
@16, nothing there worth promoting, i checked .. maybe some more thought and a tighter vision?
I think these kinds of posts are beneath the standards of your site personally. “Mine is bigger than yours” isn’t very important in the grand scheme of things. Why is this worth posting about to your readers except to triumph your superiority? It’s ego stroking not journalism. You guys are better than that.
As a reminder, here’s a feed for TechCrunch minus Michael’s constant self-appreciation and Twitter bashing:
http://icanhaz.com/tcsansarrington
Apparently, the LAT(e) thinks that something isn’t true, until THEY report it… Whenever it is that they get around to it… Next month’s headline “Barak Obama Clinches Nomination”
@ Dan —
Well, yeah… Ego stroking and blogging kinda go hand-in-hand. However the LAT(e) had the balls to claim authority on the story, and commit some borderline plagiarism in the process.
If I were in the plagiarism business, I would have lifted “third time’s a charm.” That was a much better line.
Stop promoting yourself arrington, no one cares if you did it earlier.
Arrington, so you scored with a **prediction**.
Good for you: you’re not doing well against SAI and VentureBeat in HubDub.
A good guess doesn’t make a story fact-based news. It used to be called “rumor”, but I guess that word is not in your vocabulary…
This story is not Michael bragging, it is illustrating how outdated LAT and other print publications are.
You can’t rely on newspapers for your news or you will be well behind what is actually happening at any given time. Plus the lack of attribution is ridiculous and not at all the way things should be done.
It’s a good move on EA’s part. The publisher has no real foothold in the online MMO mammoth. But titles like War Hammer which is coming out in a few months, Spore (mentioned above), and other online focused franchises like Battlefield and C&C - they should get plenty of legs out of the technology.
Your the in the know!