After Chillingo Sale, Angry Birds Dev Holds Rights, Will Continue to Self-Publish

After Electronic Arts recently bought game publisher Chillingo in a deal worth an estimated $20 million, there has been some confusion whether the new publisher of Angry Birds, EA, would have ownership of the hit iPhone game.

Rovio have cleared a few things up saying that they remain totally independent and still have ownership of the Angry Birds IP. Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka told TechCrunch: “We only did the first iPad/iPhone integration with Chillingo and aside from that we’ve published everything ourselves. We will not use Chillingo again.” Vesterbacka explained to TechCrunch that the deal between the developer and publisher left Rovio with the IP rights of Angry Birds.

He went on to say that “you don’t need publishers.” Rovio just released their latest title, Angry Birds Halloween, which will not be published by Chillingo. In fact,the company already publishes its own games on Android and Nokia, so this simple means that now the iPhone version will also be self-published.

Shack News brings up an interesting point, asking whether Rovio will continue to publish the PlayStation Mini version of the game with Chillingo, a deal drafted before EA’s purchase. Via its Twitter account, Rovio said that has “not decided yet.”