PopCap Games, maker of some of the world’s most popular video games, today announced that it has hired Frits Habermann, a longtime technology industry veteran and Adobe technology pioneer, as the company's new Chief Technical Officer. Mr. Habermann joins PopCap after 20 years at Adobe, most recently as VP of Core Technologies, where he managed the strategy and operations of key, deep-science technologies for all Adobe products including Photoshop, Flash and Acrobat. Previously he worked at RealNetworks, serving as Group Manager for RealJukebox, and Edmark, directing the engineering efforts for a portfolio of top-rated educational video games. Mr. Habermann succeeds former CTO Brian Fiete, a company co-founder, who transitions to the new role of Technology Fellow. Mr. Habermann will report directly to PopCap's Executive Vice President of Studios, Ed Allard.

"We’re thrilled to have Frits joining our management team and overseeing the company's technology strategies and direction, which are key to our long-term success," said Allard. "Frits brings strong leadership and deep management experience, with a long history of products that focus on the user experience as it relates to technology and vice versa. His passion for gaming, combined with his background leading the technology group at Adobe, makes him a natural fit for PopCap as we expand our own cross-platform offerings to stake out a leadership position in social gaming and emerging technologies like the iPad."

"I'm really excited to be part of such a vibrant, creative, fun technology company here at PopCap," Habermann said. "PopCap has created a flourishing business model by mixing creative passion with technological excellence, and I'm looking forward to helping the company scale its rapidly growing technology vision on a diverse set of platforms. I'm particularly looking forward to applying my experience with Flash and growing large technical organizations to PopCap's plans in the social gaming arena, where there's still so much to be learned and created."

Mr. Habermann spent much of the ’00s as one of the most senior technical leaders at Adobe, where he's best known as the co-founder of Adobe InDesign. After managing the technical and business directions of the InDesign team from a three-person research group into the global flagship desktop publishing product it is today, he applied his architectural and managerial skills to the core architectures across all Adobe products in his role as VP of Core Technologies. As group manager for RealJukebox he both oversaw the service's technological direction and directed the business relationships with music labels and device manufacturers such as Universal, Sony, Panasonic and Creative Labs.

Mr. Habermann holds a B.Sc from Carnegie Mellon in Applied Mathematics, and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Washington. Mr. Habermann is fluent in English, Dutch and German and has a working knowledge of French and Japanese. He lives in Seattle with his wife and three children and his hobbies include aikido, soccer, windsurfing and photography.