EA Shockwaves: Pandemic Studios Dissolved

Last week we got word that over 1500 lives would be profoundly affected by this deadly economy as Electronic Arts became unable to support those employees, having to let them go in order to keep its future bright for the rest of the staff. Unfortunately, it looks as though the aftershocks are still being felt through the company, as EA subsidiary Pandemic Studios has been confirmed by Kotaku to have just laid off 200 of its best employees, including former Pandemic CEO Andrew Goldman and President Josh Resnick. An internal memo documents the migration of a "core IP team," supposedly to keep some of the original brand identity for Pandemic's more popular franchises, to the EA Los Angeles offices. EA originally acquired Pandemic along with BioWare when it bought VG Holding Corp. in 2007.

Meanwhile, here's a sad fact that's easy to miss - Internet message boards are already alight with commenters vilifying EA for its supposed 'habit' of buying up smaller devs and then killing them off as needed. What those baiters must come to grips with is this: while it definitely sucks for everyone when a beloved studio gets closed down, it's almost assured that an independent developer attempting to work on the same level of projects as was Pandemic would likely have hit rock bottom far earlier without the buoyancy of a larger parent company to absorb some of the blow from even one undersold title. Not to say that EA is a knight in shining dragon armor who can do no wrong, but--let's face it--we're in an economy where even well-known and well-loved studios can fail. Just in the past two years, we've seen the closing of such greats as Ensemble (Age of Empires), GRIN (Ghost Recon: AW, Bionic Commando), Factor 5 (Rogue Squadron, Lair), Flagship Studios (Hellgate: London), Pivotal Games (Conflict series), and Turtle Rock (Counter-Strike: Source, Left 4 Dead), among others. It's not a good time to be a lone dev out in the world with no safety net or larger brand to help try and find work for one's experienced employees in other studios. As long as a company is run in relative sanity, with healthy doses of optimism, realism, and hope... well, the industry can only benefit from its existence.

Pandemic's past offerings include the Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans!, and Star Wars: Battlefront franchises, as well as Army Men RTS and Lord of the Rings: Conquest as standalone games. Their latest title, Saboteur, is getting some decent press recently but might still have some work left before its release date in early December, so we'll find out in the next few weeks how the closing of the studio might affect the game's launch.

Regardless of how the closedown affects us gamers, it will undoubtedly mean plenty of long nights ahead for those formerly employed developers who've worked hard under the Pandemic banner for up to 11 years now. We'll continue to keep these folks in our thoughts and hope they find footholds in the gaming industry again soon.