- Peggle free on PC via Origin - 18 April 2018
Peggle, PopCap's classic pinball puzzler, is currently free to download on PC if you have an Origin account. It is the latest game to feature in EA's Origin On the House promotion, which gifts you a game to keep forever, no strings attached. This is the original and best Peggle, too, although the sequel isn't bad either . Read more…
- Make Peggle, Not War: PopCap’s Finest For Free - 26 March 2013
Today is International Stop Hating Things Day. Do you hate things? Do you burn to say how awful you think they are on the internet? For one day only, stop it. Stop hating things! You’ll feel better. And I’ll even give you a reward for it – a free copy of Peggle Deluxe . No, you’re not allowed to hate it. That would contravene the rules of International Stop Hating Things Day. (more…)
- PopCap co-founder defends EA after worst company in America win - 5 April 2012
PopCap co-founder John Vechey has defended EA after it won the dubious honour of being crowned worst company in America . In a blog post Vechey admitted EA had made mistakes in the past, but insisted boss John Riccitiello had made improvements during his tenure atop the gargantuan publisher. Yesterday EA was voted the "worst company in America" by readers of customer watchdog site The Consumerist. EA and Bank America had beaten a number of other contenders - including Ticketmaster, Apple, GameStop, WalMart, Sony and PayPal - to reach the final round, which the games publisher won with 64.03 per cent of the public vote. Over 250,000 votes were counted throughout the contest. Reasons cited for its win include nickel and diming customers with post-launch DLC, buying up small developers to snuff out competition and releasing buggy games. The "business of games is hard", Vechey said, and "th…
- EA buys PopCap in billion dollar deal - 13 July 2011
EA has bought casual gaming giant PopCap Games in a deal worth $1.3 billion. The Bejeweled, Zuma, Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies creator will receive $650 million in cash and $100 million in stock. PopCap will be given an additional $550 million in bonuses in next few years for hitting money-making milestones. I'd like that kind of dosh please. PopCap has 400 staff. "As some of you may have heard, we recently announced that PopCap Games is being acquired by Electronic Arts, a small mom-and-pop boutique software publisher," wrote PopCap. "What does this mean for the future? It's simple: 1, EA is being rebranded to Poptronic Arts; 2, Sim Zuma: The SwampLife Edition; 3, Peggle: Dead Space Bjorn's Breakfast; 4, Bejeweled Battlefield Blitz; 5, Plants vs. ZombEAz: NFL Lockout Edition." PopCap will be able to draw on deeper resources and distribute to a wider audience worldwide. "We're not ch…
- Daily Deal - Peggle Deluxe 50% off! - 27 June 2011
Today's Deal: Save 50% off Peggle Deluxe ! Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
- Blowing Bubbles - 25 June 2011
Published as part of our sister-site GamesIndustry.biz's widely-read weekly newsletter, the GamesIndustry.biz Editorial, is a weekly dissection of an issue weighing on the minds of the people at the top of the games business. It appears on Eurogamer after it goes out to GI.biz newsletter subscribers. By any standards, PopCap is a remarkable company. Of the many new games companies to emerge from the new social and mobile gaming scene, it's one of the only ones which manages to sustain a delicate and difficult balancing act - appealing to an enormous swathe of the mainstream, casual market while still commanding significant respect from core gamers. In the past decade, the company has proved its ability not only to keenly and intelligently exploit its flagship franchise - Bejeweled - but also to generate new IP that's just as compelling as that original break-out hit, including Peggle, P…
- Cheap This Week - 20/04/11 - 20 April 2011
Welcome to Cheap This Week! We already tell you which games are out this week , so we thought we'd try bringing you a weekly roundup of the best deals in gaming as well. Look out for Cheap This Week each Wednesday. If one update every seven days isn't enough to satisfy your hunger for gaming value, you can also check out my website SavyGamer.co.uk (hi, I'm Lewie!), which is always up to date with the hottest discounts from all over. Here's what's Cheap This Week Mortal Kombat - £27.99 delivered on PS3 and Xbox 360 In my day, the difference between the different versions of Mortal Kombat was that the SEGA version had blood and the Nintendo version had sweat. Today, the only platform-exclusive factor is cross-promotion of the God of War franchise in the form of playable Kratos in the PS3 version. It's out at the end of the week, and under 30 quid seems like a fairly decent pre-order price…
- Report claims Peggle eases depression - 16 February 2011
Casual games like Peggle and Bejeweled help ease the symptoms of clinical depression, according to a new study. The survey , conducted by East Carolina University and underwritten by PopCap Games, followed 59 patients suffering from depression for a month. Some of them played PopCap titles Bejeweled 2, Peggle and Bookworm Adventures for a set amount of time each day, while a 'control' group surfed the National Institute of Mental Health's Web page on depression. After the study was finished, the test subjects who played games saw symptoms reduce by 57 per cent on average. The professor in charge of the study, Dr. Carmen Russoniello, noted that subjects suffered no negative side-effects and went on to recommend that the games be prescribed by doctors. "The results of this study clearly demonstrate the intrinsic value of certain casual games in terms of significant, positive effects on th…
- PopCap games half-price this week - 23 November 2010
All downloadable PopCap games are half-price from the PopCap website until Monday, 29th November. This excludes any bundle deals or game packs. PopCap, a renowned puzzle maker, is responsible for Plants vs. Zombies ( 9/10 - Eurogamer), Zuma's Revenge ( 8/10 - Eurogamer), Peggle Deluxe ( 9/10 - Eurogamer) and Bejeweled 3 (out on 7th December) - to name a few . The most exciting PopCap news today, however, is that top secret new game Johnny Minkley's Meat Ceiling has been spotted. An anonymous PopCap insider sent Eurogamer this image from the company's Seattle studio. PopCap co-founder John Vechey bet Eurogamer TV presenter Johnny Minkley that he couldn't eat an enormous piece of meat in a restaurant. His end of the bargain? To make a game starring Johnny Minkley and meat if he lost. And he did.
- Peggle bounces onto PSP next week - 12 November 2010
Peggle, PopCap's classic pinball-meets-pachinko timewaster, is coming to PSP next week. You'll be able to download the game from the PlayStation Store on Tuesday, priced $9.99. A UK price hasn't been confirmed yet. The game's associate producer told the PlayStation Blog , "Our expert Peggle Institute Programmers were able to get the full, original Peggle Experience into your PSP. "All the original Masters, challenges, and levels in adventure mode are here! There were some late nights and long meetings with Bjorn and Master Hu, but we got there!" Honestly, if you don't have a copy of the game yet, you need to check yourself it's an unfeasibly brilliant confection. However, it's worth bearing in mind that the equally full-featured iPhone version comes in considerably cheaper at £1.79.
- Video: our readers’ best Peggle shots - 9 November 2010
Last weekend we ran a competition to send in a replay of your best shot in a Peggle game, with a large bounty of Peggle swag for our favourite. We've watched all the shots, recorded our favourites and made them into a quick highlights video. Overall winner after the clip. If you watch the rabbit during the Sir Jelliot's endless lobster flippery, you can almost see him going slowly mad trying to hold his cheerful disposition. And the prize for coolest Peggle shot goes to: Klinglern! For his ridiculous rebound in Peggle Extreme. He completes the level in the first second of the shot, but then his ball bounces back out of the lowest scoring bucket, up through a portal, teleports to the top left of the map, drops down onto a purple score peg (which count for 10,000 druing Extreme Fever), then rebounds off a bumper to hit the last peg on the board, triggering ULTRA EXTREME FEVER and turing a…
- Win a bundle of Peggle loot: give us your best shot - 7 November 2010
If you've never wanted a tiny plushie Splork of your own, you haven't got that far in Peggle yet. Well, now you can get one of those, a Peggle mug, two Peggle badges, a Peggle mouse mat, a Peggle iPhone skin, Peggle, Peggle Nights, £30 of iTunes vouchers to buy Peggle and anything else on the iPhone, a bumper sticker reading XTRM FVR, and for some reason a bunch of Chuzzles. All you have to do is save a replay of a great Peggle shot, zip it up, and post it on our forums. It can be Peggle Deluxe, Peggle Nights, or Peggle Extreme, but it probably has to be the PC version. We're not looking for the highest score, just that mix of style, skill and dumb luck that makes Peggle fun. Here's how to submit one. When you make a good shot, click 'Instant Replay' in the bottom right shortly after. You'll then get the option to save it as a file. Once you have, find your saved replays in C:\ProgramDa…
- The Making of Peggle - 4 November 2010
PopCap Games are the creators of Bejeweled, Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies, each of them one of the biggest and most lovable games on PC. When casual and social games are reaching ever larger audiences and their developers are getting a bad reputation for poor design practices, how have PopCap managed to find fans amongst gamers and grannies alike? To find out, I visited the studio and interviewed everyone I could find. We're running those interviews each day this week and calling it PopCap Week. Today I'm speaking to PopCap co-founder Jason Kapalka and the designer of Peggle, Sukhbir Sidhub. It's only now when looking back at the transcript that I realise there are long periods when I don't ask any questions. Jason and Sukhbir have worked together for years, and it shows. They talk away without my intervention, revealing details of PopCap's forgotten first release, a strip poker game ca…
