EA's acquisition of social gaming company Playfish has been very successful, especially if you look at The Sims Social (currently #5 game on the AppData charts). The man largely responsible for shepherding development at Playfish, John Earner, is leaving today to join the Accel Partners venture capital firm as an “entrepreneur in residence” according to a report on TechCrunch.
This follows the departure of a number of other Playfish execs since the acquisition. Last March, co-founders Sami Lababidi (who was Playfish CTO) and EA Interactive VP Sebastien de Halleux (previously Playfish COO) left the company, but continue as consultants to EA. More recently, Zynga hired away EA Interactive Executive Vice President Barry Cottle, who led the group containing Playfish.
EA recently announced they were reorganizing their digital business, dividing EA Interactive's resources among other divisions. Coming off of a successful 2011 where the digital business brought in over $1 billion in revenue, this is an interesting move. EA must feel that this reorganization is important to continue the growth of the digital part of their business, which has much better margins than the packaged goods business.
