EA confirms closure of Pandemic Studios News

Buy and shutdown. Good job EA.

/sarcasm

Booo Hissss! Full Spectrum Warrior was an ace game on the old xbox.

When will developers learn. Sell yourself to EA, be made redundant within a couple of years.

I hope they reform and continue making games.

return to the bad old EA?

I really do hope no one from Pandemic got the news first from the internet... as the rumours started to fly the other day.
that would suck even more balls. :/

Commiserations to all at Pandemic - not too impressed with EA's attitude of 'sod the staff, we've got their IP', though.

Electronic-Assholes

Does this effect The Saboteur? I hope not I really like the look of it. Such a shame as Mercs and FSW were two of my favourite xbox games.

...and I bet saboteur is going to be a big hit.

While this certainly sucks for anyone employed at the layoff affected studios I'm surprised to see that some here think that enterprises are there for charity. This is games _industry_, money doesn't grow on trees. No trees, no games. Or something.

Anyways I wouldn't put the heat on EA just for the fact that they want to control their expenses.

This is the normal MO for E.A.
They have always done this, since the advent of the 2nd generation of Games consoles ( PS2 etc)

They take all the IP's and fire the people.

I don't know, maybe if I were a mega rich company I'd do the same
( and to be honest, in the recent 3-4 years their output has increased in quality massively, but only becaue they have chewed up and spat out numerous other companies).

However, it still seems unfair, and they were not a great company to work for either
( I was only a testing dummy myself, but they dump on their testers the same way they appear to dump on the companies they absorb)

Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, the upcoming The Saboteur and Dante' Inferno are an example of how EA are turning over a new leaf and making new IPs after the criticisms they have had of milking franchises. EA at least are now showing to be listening to the gaming folks.

The hatred EA still receive from some gaming quarters is ludicrous to say the least. The gaming industry has been hit by tough financial times and many publishers and devs have been laying off stuff not just EA.

Folks need to stop being sheep by joining the EA hate band wagon as its unwarranted these days.

I'm sorry to say this but although Pandemic looked like a really promising and forward thinking developer on the last generation of consoles (Mercs and Full Spectrum Warrior were excellent) the move to PS3 and Xbox 360 has really not done them any good. Their games just haven't been up to standard, Mercs 2 was a buggy broken mess of a game, Lord of the Ring was dire and The Saboteur even though it has some interesting ideas, really doesn't look particularly great.

It's no real surprise that EA have pulled the plug IMO.

I wish all employees the best though finding new work, they clearly are talented developers, just a bit misguided recently.

@FortysixterUK: the 2nd generation of games consoles (PS2 etc.)?

I think you'll find that it was the 6th generation of games consoles!

No word on how this affects The Saboteur? I hope it's released as planned as I was planning on getting it!

Lets hope quality is good enough on The Saboteur, patches are likely to take some time if only a few of the devs are still around.

Saboteur should be okay, its only out in a few weeks so should be finished?

Redundancy sucks, commiserations to those affected.

Still glad I quit the games industry 4 years ago.

From Gamespot:
"Brown said Pandemic's next game, The Saboteur, was unaffected by the layoffs and is on track for its December 8 release on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC."

How come Destroy All Humans! is never mentioned in the same breath as Pandemic?

I love those games!

They never were as good as everyone made them out to be. Mercenaries2 was one of my most anticipated games this generation, and I watched all the developer diaries. In retrospect, those vids already kind of showed the company was made up of a bunch immature nerdlingers trying to be superstar developers. The game eventually sucked. They just got lucky with Mercs1 and that alien game that was pretty funny.

I remember when they sold out to EA (around the same time as Bioware) they were all quick to assure us they would remain as good as idenpendent and that this was great move for everyone, blah blah blah. It felt like bullshit then, and proves itself now. If you sell out to a big company this, something like this WILL happen sooner or later. So we're all pretty quick to point the finger to EA on this, but you should watch those developer vids on the mercs2 site (if they're still there)...