Longtime gaming exec Paul Sams recently uprooted from Orange County, moved to Austin, Texas, and then ended up taking the top job at Irvine-based game developer Ready at Dawn, which is less than two miles from his former employer, Blizzard Entertainment Inc.
Sams, who spent 20 years at Blizzard—most recently in the role of president and chief operating officer—didn’t plan it that way.
“I didn’t think I would ever leave Blizzard,” said Sams, who played a key role in the past decade guiding the company from 50 employees to more than 4,000 as its market value soared past $5 billion.
But weekly commutes for about a year from Irvine to Austin to be home with his family—who moved there partly due to past connections they had with the city and state—took a toll. His wife is a University of Texas alum, and his daughter is a junior at the school. The couple are also the chief benefactors of the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy at UT.
It was a Blizzard connection that ultimately led Sams—who will work from Austin—to Ready at Dawn, which has developed games for Sony, Capcom and Nintendo.
Longtime friends and former Blizzard colleagues Ru Weerasuriya and Andrea Pessino launched the company in 2003, growing it to about 100 employees. The trio would bounce ideas off each other through the years and talked about working on a project some time down the road.
The opportunity suddenly became a reality when Sams left Blizzard, but he and his family had decided that Austin would be their home.
Weerasuriya, who was named one of the top 100 developers in the world in 2008 and 2009, wanted to get back to game design, “where his passion is,” according to Sams, who joined Blizzard under similar circumstances when cofounder Allen Adham left the company in 2004.
“That literally is exactly what’s happening right now,” Sams said. “I think this will be a cool thing.”
Ingram-Greenlight Connection
Count Santa Ana-based technology product distributor Ingram Micro Inc. among the holdings of David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital Inc.
Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that the New York hedge fund holds about 1.1 million shares of Ingram that are worth about $27.9 million.
The influential hedge fund added $129.3 million in investments in the first quarter and now has a portfolio value of $7.65 billion.
Ingram Micro had revenue of $46.4 billion last year and had a recent market cap of about $4.2 billion.
Broadcom Licenses New Technology
Irvine-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp., which is about to be acquired for $37 billion by Avago Technologies Ltd. in Singapore, has struck a deal with at least one unnamed manufacturer that will license its new near-field communication contact payment technology called MIFARE.
The chips power contactless ticketing, transportation and access applications.
Financial details of the licensing deal weren’t released, but Broadcom said MIFARE is widely deployed in the industry.
NFC technology has been more extensively adopted in South Korea and Europe than in the U.S., but it’s expected to get greater demand stateside as more buildings, transportation hubs and retailers roll out infrastructure and tags needed to support it.
The combined company, which will go under the name Broadcom Ltd., will be the third largest chipmaker in the world, with annual revenue of about $15 billion and a market value of $77 billion. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of next year.
