Rumor: EA is shutting Beijing subsidiary and handing China work over to PopCap (UPDATED)

Here’s an interesting rumor that’s been popping up in the Chinese gaming press this week: EA is planning to shut down all or part of its Beijing subsidiary office (Playfish Beijing) and hand most of the company’s China localization and development work over to PopCap China, the EA subsidiary located in Shanghai.

To be clear, this is—for now—just a rumor. We have contacted both EA Mobile and Popcap China for comment, and will update this post when we hear back. UPDATE: Both PopCap China and EA have declined to comment.

That said, PopCap is one of the few Western developers to have achieved repeated success in China, and the China office has already been working on localization for other EA games in addition to working on its own, as revealed to us by PopCap China’s GM back in January. Given the studio’s track record, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to hear that EA was putting it in charge of more of the company’s China operations.

(via 17173)