Codemasters Goes On E3 Acquisition Offensive

British-headquartered publisher and developer Codemasters has assigned a new multi-million dollar war chest to acquire and fund new gaming properties, following the investment Codemasters recently secured from venture capital firm Benchmark Capital Europe, according to Chairman, CEO and co-founder David Darling. The previously announced Benchmark deal gave the company a substantial new cash injection, which is presumably the source of this new acquisitions war chest - in return for this cash infusion, Benchmark Capital acquired 40 percent of the firm. To lead the acquisitions program for Codemasters, which is best known in Europe for the Colin McRae Rally series, but does not have quite such a high profile in North America, Darling has appointed Peter Zetterberg as Head of Acquisitions. Zetterberg was previously CEO of Daydream Software, the listed Swedish games studio, and was the founder of developer UDS. Earlier in the week Codemasters announced that it would not have any presence on the E3 show floor this year, with company representatives restricting themselves to private meeting rooms. With the appointment of Zetterberg, though, the company will be using these rooms to meet developers and sign titles for "international publishing and distribution" on current and next generation consoles, as well as on and offline PC projects. Further information on this is available in the official Codemasters press release.