LONDON, November 9 /PRNewswire/ --

Index Ventures and Accel Partners, two leading global venture capital firms, today announce the sale of portfolio company Playfish Inc. to Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS). Playfish was acquired for a consideration of up to US$400 million including an earnout of up to US$100 million and excluding cash balances.

Kevin Comolli, board member from Accel Partners stated, "As the original institutional seed investor in Playfish it has been a pleasure to work with the founders and management team and to see them achieve such extraordinary growth. Playfish has been recognized in the industry for its innovation and creativity and continues to change the way people play games by creating more social and connected experiences. We are sure they will continue to thrive under the ownership of Electronic Arts."

Ben Holmes, board member from Index Ventures said, "We want to congratulate Kristian Segerstrale, the other founders and the entire Playfish team for what they have achieved in such a short time. We are delighted to have been one of the investors in such a forward-thinking company and we wish them every success in the future."

Kristian Segerstrale, Playfish CEO, commented, "I want to thank Accel Partners and Index Ventures who bought into our vision for a new type of games company and have supported us from the start and through our sale to Electronic Arts."

About Playfish

Playfish leads the social gaming industry in innovation and creativity with award-winning, category-defining games designed for friends to play together. The company has changed the way people play games by creating more social and connected experiences. To date, more than 150 million Playfish games have been installed and played by millions of people worldwide on platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, Google, Bebo, iPhone and Android. The company's games are amongst the most acclaimed and popular online, including Pet Society, Restaurant City, Country Story and Who Has The Biggest Brain? Playfish has development studios in London, San Francisco, Beijing and Tromso, Norway. Playfish is backed by Accel Partners, Index Ventures and Stanhope Capital.

About Accel Partners

Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of excellence and innovation in venture capital, and is dedicated to partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses. Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo Alto, California, London, UK, and Bangalore, India as well as in China via the IDG-Accel Partnership.

With over US$6 billion under management, Accel has helped entrepreneurs build over 300 successful companies, many of which have defined their categories, including Actuate, Acopia, Agile Software, Alfresco, AMCC, Arrowpoint, BBN, Brightcove, ComScore, Etsy, Facebook, Foundry Networks, Gameforge, Getjar, GlamMedia, Imperva, Infinera, Interwoven, JBoss, Kayak, Macromedia, Maven Networks, metroPCS, Polycom/PictureTel, Portal Software, QlikTech, Rapt, Real Networks, Redback Networks, Riverbed, UUNet, Veritas, Walmart.com, Webroot, Wily Technology, XenSource and Zimbra. For more information, please visit the Accel Partners web site at www.accel.com

About Index Ventures

Index Ventures is a leading global venture capital firm active in technology venture investing since 1996. The firm is dedicated to helping top entrepreneurial teams in the Information Technology, Clean Technology and Life Science sectors build their companies into market defining global leaders. The firm has offices in Geneva, London and Jersey and focuses on investments from seed through growth stage companies. Current portfolio companies include Adconion, AlertMe, Betfair, Criteo, DimDim, Lovefilm, Moshi Monsters, MOO, NormOxys, Oanda, OpenX, PanGenetics, Telegent and viagogo. Recent exits of note include Last.fm (the world's largest socialmusic platform, recently acquired by CBS) and MySQL (the world's most popular open source database recently acquired by Sun). For more information, please visit www.indexventures.com.