The story
Founded by Jason Kapalka in 2000, in Seattle.1
PopCap Games was founded by John Vechey, Brian Fiete, and Jason Kapalka in 2000. They originally incorporated as "Sexy Action Cool", a phrase taken from a poster of Desperado. Their first title was a strip poker game called "Foxy Poker" and was supposed to be a revenue stream for its future titles.
Their first game as PopCap was Bejeweled, a gem-swapping game, which was supported on all major platforms and given an award by Computer Gaming World Hall Of Fame in 2002.
The company expanded in 2005 with the acquisition of Sprout Games, a casual games developer company in Seattle like PopCap Games, started by James Gwertzman.
Sprout Games created the game Feeding Frenzy. The Sprout team helped PopCap make a sequel to the game, Feeding Frenzy 2: Shipwreck Showdown, with Gwertzman becoming the director of business development at PopCap.
In early 2006, PopCap International was opened, based in Dublin working on product localization, mobile games development, marketing, sales, and business development.
PopCap began another round of expansion in July 2007 by buying other casual game developers such as the Vancouver based studio SpinTop Games, creators of games like Mistery Solitaire and Mistery P.I. And the Chicago-based development house Retro64, founded by Mike Boeh, which is best known for their retro-arcade action and puzzle titles.
After the acquisitions, the PopCap logo was rebranded, dropping the "Games" portion. PopCap's premium games list on their website are mixed with other games from other developers/distributors. PopCap hosted several games on PopCap.com and other websites, online and premium, until 2014, when they stopped offering games from their site.
On February 2009, PopCap acquired Gastronaut Studios, an independt developer, creators of the game Small Arms, and who worked with Popcap by porting Peggle and Feeding Frenzy 2 to XBLA.
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On April 5, 2011, PopCap announced the creation of a new subsidiary, 4th and Battery, started in order to create "edgier" games. Their first creation was the game Unpleasant Horse.
On May 3, 2011, PopCap announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based studio ZipZapPlay, this in an effort to expand their resources in social-based games on Facebook.
On July 12, 2011, Electronic Arts announced that it was acquiring PopCap for $650 million with an additional $100 million stock option. On August 21, 2012, PopCap laid off 50 employees in North America in a move to address a shift to mobile and free-to-play games and evaluated ceasing operations of its Dublin studio. The Dublin studio was closed on September 24, 2012.
In 2014, Vechey was the last of the founders to announce his departure from the company. This followed Kapalka's resignation earlier the same year. Fiete left in 2010, prior to PopCap's acquisition by EA.
From Wikipedia’s article on PopCap Games, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.6