EA Mobile Moves: IronMonkey & Firemint Merge Into “Firemonkeys,” Now Have 50M Players Between
Rip Empson is a writer and rabble-rouser at TechCrunch. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health, and education. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More Electronic Arts announced today that it is merging two top mobile game studios, IronMonkey and Firemint, which will fittingly combine to create a new company, called Firemonkeys. (All parties are awarded 50 points for the awesome portmanteau.) For those unfamiliar, IronMonkey is probably best known for adapting popular EA titles to mobile, like Mass Effect Infiltrator, Dead Space, and The Sims FreePlay. Freemint, meanwhile, has produced a number of its own popular games, including Flight Control, Real Racing, and SPY Mouse — to name a few. Both studios are currently subsidiaries of the gaming giant, which acquired IronMonkey in early 2010 and Firemint in May 2011. The rebranded operation will continue to work out of EA’s Australian headquarters in Melbourne, where the teams will be tasked with creating ne...