EA Shuts Down Pandemic Studios

Oh my bejeebus if EA cuts C&C I'll never buy another game from them ever again.

I love how they think the ideas are worth keeping but the folks who created the ideas are not. Like anyone can now carry the ball...

C&C is one of the greatest game franchies ever, I am with aznriptide859 on this one, don't screw us EA...

EA has the use, abuse, then drop mentality towards game publishing. They buy up smaller studios who made a good IP, churn out a ton of sequals. Then drop the studio entirely.

"I want to make it clear that the Pandemic brand and franchises will live on"

So the theory here is that the brand determines product quality, not developers.

Basically, what Curnel_D said.

Not really surprised at the cut with Pandemic, they've been doing -awful-, and maybe EA looked at Saboteur and decided it wasn't up to snuff.

Besides, looking around, it looks like they've cut mostly staffers, and kept a lot of the talent.

For me, personally, EA has not screwed me over yet.

Had no interest in Spore, Red Alert 3, or any of those other games that people said were terrible for them. Lucky me, I guess.

I don't really care for EA. They really make a business out of games. I feel like there games are made by a corporation trying to make money not by people that care about more than just the bottom line. On the flip side I feel that Blizzard will refuse to release a game until it really has that fun factor and that they truely care about the quality of thier games not just deadlines and dollars.

C&C was dead after Generals. While Generals was a "good game" it wasn't a "C&C game" imo. EA just Shits over anything it touches.

Create a company, make it a hit and able to hang with the big boys, sell to big boys, be rich, get laid off, go to hawaii, come back from hawaii, start new company, see 2nd phrase and continue again. add retire early in there somewhere.

If they pull this crap with Bioware, I will personally drive down and drag the ceo away in my trunk.

Ea has to know at this point that if they so much as send a email with a pink background to anyone at Bioware. Fire the janitor for stealing and having sex on the bosses desk. we will hear about it and the nerd rage will go in to high gear. Bioware and Valve to name a few are not to be toyed with let them do what they do and get your checks they may not be quite as big as you think they could be but your still making. what they could stand to lose messing with Bioware is huge. I for one end up buying like 20+ EA titles a year for friends family or my self. If bioware is tainted by there greed i will take my money elsewhere and I'm sure others would do the same. (I hate EA and do my best to stay away from them but my mother and sister are Sims addicts and they make ez gifts)

MESS WITH BIOWARE AT YOUR PERIL!!!!NO ONE WANTS TO SEE NERD ON NERD CRIME.

They can't make cut backs at Maxis, all Maxis does is make money, why would they damage the money machine? Stupid EA

What games to do they make? I don't think I have owned a game from this studio, so its not much of a loss for me game wise. Too bad about the 1500 jobs though. I hate seeing lay-offs of any sort.

@dark_lord69's "On the flip side I feel that Blizzard will refuse to release a game until it really has that fun factor and that they truely care about the quality of thier games not just deadlines and dollars."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Kotick

Yah, they don't anymore.

I've played the entire C&C series,even back to the old Westwood days, I hated to see EA take over the franchise but continued to play it. As others have said before me, don't screw us over EA...

"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." Kotick later stated he tries to promote an atmosphere of "skepticism, pessimism, and fear" in his company and, "We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression." -Wikipedia

Wow, that explains alot...

"Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated!"

I'll ask Joe Kucan about this before I do any real speculation.

Ok I wish we had an EDIT button. Joe has told me that they might be merging Pandemic with EA and I quote: "but most of the new guys really arn't that bad. we're just running outta ideas and crap for CNC"

Why would they drop C&C and Maxis? They are two of the largest money making franchises EA has...

Toms really should put a little more background info into their articles. I might give a damn if I knew what Pandemic did.

Gonna google it, but I shouldn't need to.

EA is the worst thing to happen to the games industry.

matt: you're wrong.. the worst is ACTIVISION

Eh... It's sad and it's not.

Some of these smaller companies honestly SEEK to be bought out, knowing they'll likely get shut down. You've got to understand that most of the employees are stockholders. When EA\Activision\Faceless Congolomerate X buy them out for ridiculous globs of money, these employees generally get a decent cut. Furthermore, as stockholders, they usually have some say in this as well. And if the employees are smart, they've had their retirement put into stock... It's honestly fairly standard for the industry.

When they get bought, the employees get a nice lump sum and usually continue working until new big brother drops most of them. So long as they're smart and don't spend that whole payout on something, they're fine.

And honestly, to some degree you do have to sometimes have to move franchises to new development teams. For example, the RE series, RE4\5 was a major departure for the series, new dev team made new ideas work very well. Other examples are the change in quality from more recent Tomb Raider games, Fallout 3, and there are others. I'm not saying it's always good, but do we really want to see another adventure from the Sonic Team? Teams get stale and stagnant, and sometimes the only way for the industry as a whole to keep things fresh is the circle of [employment] life, as layed off employees get work with different teams, or form new dev teams, new ideas sprout forth, and we get new franchises we can all enjoy. It's just how things are.

Besides, it's business, when a company sells to big brother; the investors and\or employees know that it's likely coming in the future, it's expected. Is it really fair to expect the buying company to nurture a smaller studio while they make subpar products? Honestly now, if EA buys Pandemic, and Pandemic's new products start selling less, how is it fair to expect EA to continue biting the bullet? EA already invested $XXX into Pandemic to buy them in the first place, why should they suffer for that? And honestly, Pandemic really didn't have a lot of fantastic exclusive rights franchises. No one cared about the Mercenaries series, Pandemic didn't own Star Wars Battlefront, and their LotR title was abysmal... So what are folks so worried about EA 'stealing' from this now-defunct studio, anyways?

Eh, nobody likes losing their jobs, but understand that this happens, and smart folks in these positions aren't without their safety nets.

ea needs to stop buying game companies like pandemic and westwood and shutting down their games.