Update: Forum MODs have just confirmed for us that this was an April Fool's joke. That's strange though because we could have sworn it was still March. Thanks for wasting every body's time!
Confident they'll soon be the owners of all things Take Two Interactive, Electronic Arts has made a push to acquire GTANet.com, one of the largest Grand Theft Auto communities online (which is comprised of 11 different GTA based websites). According to reports, EA has acquired the site, including all domains associated and all statistical information about its members (as listed in the above email scan from EA to GTANet owners found by WhatIfGaming), for $3.4 million as of March 22.
If true, Electronic Arts would have one of the largest databases of information of any Grand Theft Auto community available. Speculation aside, we wonder how important this information is to EA if they were to acquire Take Two.
While the owners of the GTANet have not posted an official confirmation on the matter, the GTAForums.com logo has been changed to incorporate the EA insignia adding fuel to the fire. With this supposed acquisition we wonder Take Two acquisition press release is being edited as we speak.
[Thanks, Chris]
[Read, full email scan]
[Read, GTAForums New Logo]
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
3-24-2008 @ 11:47PM
Mayor McCheese said...
an april fools joke is perfect given the popularity of GTA4 and the current hot issue of the hostile takeover bid of Take Two. The GTA forums are getting tons of hits and free publicity on top of the added hits from just the game coming out soon.
Sounds like it's a win-win either way...if it is a joke. I don't see EA buying them up before they get the IP, then paste their logo on the site like this. That's way too cokcy for even EA.
3-25-2008 @ 12:15AM
Exo said...
GTA IV comes out in 1 month. if they purchased take two this second, it would not change the contents of GTA IV at all.
3-25-2008 @ 4:33AM
Chase said...
Sidebar, that GTA Forum has over 183 thousand members. That's bigger than Guam and almost bigger than Samoa. O_O;
3-25-2008 @ 4:33AM
kfresh97 said...
Why is everyone so upset about EA trying to buy T2? Hell, if you had billions of dollars, wouldn't you want to buy Rockstar?
Yeah, pretty sure you would.
3-25-2008 @ 5:27AM
Tom said...
It's false. Tank, the owner of gtanet, bought sims3.com and used gtanet to build pagerank. a new sims game was announced, traffic was driven, 'speculation' begun on the gtaforums.com site (it's users are morons), and the admins "played along". It's a prank, I have this on the word of the girl that administrator "illspirit" thinks is his girlfriend because he's a desperate loser.
3-25-2008 @ 5:27AM
DiFiasco said...
Despite everything EA has said, I think Hauser had better make backup plans to create a new brand because it looks like the big pig is not about to let Rockstar walk away as planned.
3-25-2008 @ 5:28AM
Tom said...
its* users, sorry, I looked at the site long enough to lose a few IQ points.
3-25-2008 @ 10:15AM
hottnesssss said...
I think this is false now as well. I just went back to the forums to see what was going on and the EA logo has been taken down. Hmmmmmm.
3-25-2008 @ 5:42PM
AndyGTANet said...
Folks seem to be a bit bitter around here. I'll touch on the issue of the prank specifically, mainly because I was one of the few moderators who came up with the original concept.
It's an annual tradition at GTANet to have some sort of "prank" on/around April the 1st. Sometimes we hit early, sometimes we hit late. In response to the ongoing issue of EA attempting to take over Take Two, we thought it'd be amusing to suggest to our members that our forums had been "bought out" by Electronic Arts.
Unfortunately, some members of the community took this too far, and attempted to spread the rumours beyond the confines of GTAForums.
I would like to apologize to anyone who was gullible enough to buy into this charade.
Cheers.