Eidos insiders confirm News Corp deal is imminent

Sources at UK publisher Eidos have confirmed that the company is about to be sold to Rupert Murdoch's media empire News Corporation, with the deal expected to be announced within the coming week.

"We're just really glad the News Corp thing is out in the open now," a source at the company told GamesIndustry.biz in the wake of our report yesterday which linked News Corp to the Eidos sale.

"Keep an eye on it over the next week," he continued. "It could happen on Thursday, it could happen on Monday - we're not sure, but there's light at the end of the tunnel now."

Eidos has been very publicly seeking a buyer for some months, and has entered into negotiations with a number of rival publishers - but it's News Corp, which has openly stated its interest in moving into the games market, which is set to sign on the dotted line.

Rumours that a deal was close to being struck initially stemmed from a number of tell-tale signs at the firm's offices - specifically a hiring freeze across the company, and reports that development studios have been told to prepare presentations on each of their projects for the new owners.

The deal is arguably a best case scenario for Eidos, which will be able to continue functioning as a publisher under the News Corporation umbrella - whereas had the firm been sold to a rival publisher, it was widely expected that much of the publishing end of the business would be shut down, with only the valuable IP and studios being retained.

"Everyone within Eidos knows that when it gets sold, it's going to be sold as a group with a new flag on it," our source confirmed this morning. "It's not going to be broken up in the same way Criterion was."