EA acquires VG Holdings (BioWare and Pandemic)

[fuser]

Well, there goes another good dev studio. Alright, what's left for the evil disgusting giant to buy?

I think EA's katamari had to get a bit bigger with these... Whats next? Engine developers id/Epic or other publishers?

[cmlancas]

Blizzard, obviously. If they put out all the games on the market, they make all the money.


It's so full of win.

 


How long will it be until we start getting yearly installments of the Shock series?

[Nevermore]

Is there nothing EA won't buy and destroy?  So long Bioware, you were one of my favorites. 

[Strazos]

FUCK.


Seriously, I'm like the resident BioWare fanboi. Fuck.



Just....Fuck. Am I gonna have ta choke a bitch?

[Hoax]

Really though, as long as the talent at Bioware got some of the phat lewtz from this takeover is it a bad thing?  Now those guys have the money to go out and try to form their own studios and shit right?  There's nothing that forces them to stick w/ Bioware now that it is owned by EA esp. once the great evil shitcans their MMO for not being Madden enough.

Just thinking out loud..  I don't track this kind of stuff often.

[cmlancas]

Before we all go  , is there any way that EA will maintain Bioware as a separate entity much like Sony has different parts of SOE?

I'm not down with how all this works, so for the more common of the posters like myself, I need clarification.

[Murgos]

Before we all go  , is there any way that EA will maintain Bioware as a separate entity much like Sony has different parts of SOE?

I'm not down with how all this works, so for the more common of the posters like myself, I need clarification.

EA has a long history of buying the hottest, best loved, idea filled design studio and utterly destroying it.  There have been NO successes.

[schild]

Will Wright?

[Strazos]

lol


Well, to be fair, BioWare (Austin) is very seperate from BioWare (Edmonton). All the old talent is in Edmonton. So is Mass Effect.



Well, the only possible upside to this is that now BioWare should have access to enough money to keep Mass Effect in production until is COMPLETELY Done. None of this Obsidian half-assed-finished bullshit.


Speaking of which, how does this affect Obsidian? Or were they part of Pandemic now?

[AngryGumball]

I am curious did any of you behind the scene guys know this was coming?

[Calandryll]

I really liked the UOX/2, or whatever they called it, concept and thought that could have been a real good game.

UXO. And yea, me too. ;)

[Trippy]

Will Wright?

EA destroyed Maxis, though. They did finally realize after destroying Origin, Bullfrog and Westwood that maybe they need to keep him around so they did appease him by letting him keep a little studio in the East Bay for Spore rather than forcing him to commute across the Bay every day (which is a fricking pain in the ass) like what they did to what's left of the Maxis people.

[Salamok]

You guys are looking at this all wrong.  You should be seeing this as EA dumping a bunch of talented meatplace developers on the market.

[schild]

Guys. Guys. Guys.

I was going to write an article on this, but hell, here's why it's funny.

1. Pits Mythic against Bioware Austin.
2. Brings in a shitload of talent that will either quit, or help EA fix Madden (lol).
3. WARHAMMER or Bioware MYSTERY TITLE will see the light of day. One studio will engulf the studio of the other.
4. RACE TO BEAT WOW, LOLOLOLOLOLOL.
5. They just killed Atari in one, single blow. Next purchase, Atari, for pennies on the dollar.
6. They just bought the only decent RPG PC Group in America. Oh, right Obsidian. Bioware's bitch. Like they matter. Wriggling corpse of Black Isle imo.
7. LOL ATARI.
8. LOL WAR BETA.
9. LOL DRAGON AGE.
10. LOL - Pandemic is actually pretty good.
11. They just got a shitload of great licenses.

There's like 50 more reasons it's hilarious. Why don't I care? Because I'm a clown!

[Lum]

I am curious did any of you behind the scene guys know this was coming?

Nope!

[SnakeCharmer]

Well, BioWare's forums are alive and well, seething with nerd fury.  And naturally, their completely retarded 'policy' of locking threads once they reach 10 pages makes reading the responses more of a chore than it ordinarilly would be.  Not one comment from anyone at BioWare regarding the future of their MMO, interestingly enough (or not).  Woo and Priestly are locking threads left and right with their cutesy "End of line!" and "Lockdown!" sign offs. 

If you take a gander, bring some marshmellows!

[Abelian75]

I am curious did any of you behind the scene guys know this was coming?

Nope!

Indeed, from what I heard, guys AT the scene didn't know it was coming.

[Phildo]

I think now would be a good time to start buying tons of EA stock.  Or applying for cushy profit-sharing jobs.  Yay, capitalism!

[Jobu]

Now those guys have the money to go out and try to form their own studios and shit right?  There's nothing that forces them to stick w/ Bioware now that it is owned by EA esp. once the great evil shitcans their MMO for not being Madden enough.

Just thinking out loud..  I don't track this kind of stuff often.

In buyouts like this, the core people usually get slung with long-term contracts that force them stick around for several years. The only people who'd be able to bail on the new EA-Bioware are the ones who didn't make tons of studio-forming money from the acquisition in the first place.

What I find amusing is there are probably people at the Austin studio who used to work at Origin when it was gobbled and destroyed. Maybe some of these people even quit because of their unhappiness over the way EA ran things. Fast forward several years, and now they're suddenly back at EA. 

[CharlieMopps]

Wow, I never thought of a company as big as Bioware as "Buyable"

[Cheddar]

What the fuck just happened here?

[Trippy]

In buyouts like this, the core people usually get slung with long-term contracts that force them stick around for several years.

They aren't "forced" to stick around (that would be slavery) -- they are just given financial incentive to do so.

[UnSub]

What the fuck just happened here?

History repeated. Everyone is shocked.

[schild]

What the fuck just happened here?

History repeated. Everyone is shocked.

<-------------- Not this guy.

[SnakeCharmer]

Eric Schild. 

The Joan Rivers of gaming.

[MournelitheCalix]

Really though, as long as the talent at Bioware got some of the phat lewtz from this takeover is it a bad thing?  Now those guys have the money to go out and try to form their own studios and shit right?  There's nothing that forces them to stick w/ Bioware now that it is owned by EA esp. once the great evil shitcans their MMO for not being Madden enough.

Just thinking out loud..  I don't track this kind of stuff often.

I wish it was that simple.  Lets face it this is the age of no-compete agreements, I bet most if not all of the key talent in Bioware has no-compete agreements which last years.  All hail the fascist age where you get the pleasure of selling your souls to parasitic corporations like EA for the privilege of working in the sweat shop.

[SnakeCharmer]

Oh good God....

[Trippy]

Really though, as long as the talent at Bioware got some of the phat lewtz from this takeover is it a bad thing?  Now those guys have the money to go out and try to form their own studios and shit right?  There's nothing that forces them to stick w/ Bioware now that it is owned by EA esp. once the great evil shitcans their MMO for not being Madden enough.

Just thinking out loud..  I don't track this kind of stuff often.

I wish it was that simple.  Lets face it this is the age of no-compete agreements, I bet most if not all of the key talent in Bioware has no-compete agreements which last years.  All hail the fascist age where you get the pleasure of selling your souls to parasitic corporations like EA for the privilege of working in the sweat shop.

Those sorts blanket non-compete agreements are not valid in California.

[Tannhauser]

Gah, they got Bioware!  This is just, just not cool.  EA is a bunch of knuckleheads, gonna be sad to see Bioware broken up and injested into the EA collective.

Any of you Bioware guys reading this I just wanna say "So long and thanks for all the games."

[Ghambit]

Well... "hi guys."  I figure I'd use this tasty bit of drama to make my first post.  Almost feels like losing my virginity or something (yes, it was that bad)... but I digress.   

Please correct me if I'm wrong... but didnt Bioware "technically" just buy Perpetual (i.e. paid ridiculous sums of money to "license" their gaming platform)?   And didn't Perpetual just turn GnH (pubbed by SOE) belly up?  Along with firing most of the staff.  Of course, now Perpetual is SUPPOSED to be concentrating on STO...  which by virtue of SOE pubbing GnH FIGURED to be gobbled up by SOE when the time came.  STO currently has no publisher btw, unless Perp. pubs it themselves or Paramount does it (doubtful).

But... seeing as how EA just bought up half the gamespace (Bioware included), I guess now Perpetual has (unwittingly I'm sure) just sold its vanguard gaming platform to EA!!!

<im starting to get a headache...  but I shall continue>

SOE now only has PotBS left as an upcoming project, after now losing Perpetual as a client.  You can bet your bottom dollar SOE had/has some trick up their sleeve to get into the door for STO.  But EA now "owns" errr... "rents" Perpetual's gaming platform.  Kind of a conflict of interest there.

Let's see.. I surmise that since Perpetual made beaucoup credits selling their platform to Bioware a.k.a. "EA" that they could afford to scrap GnH so close to launch and not care much.  Regardless, it could also be a sign they couldn't financially handle both projects.

This being the case...  it sure as hell feels like EA or SOE will make a move on Perpetual. 

btw: Between all the non-competes that must be out there... how the hell are these people supposed to get anything actually MADE?? 

[schild]

Your post doesn't make any fucking sense, newfish.

SOE ran away from GnH because it was _bad_.
SOE has DCU, The Agency, and other things in development.
Bioware simply licensed Perpetuals platform. Or rather, part of it. The chat part or some other senseless bullshit.
That was a bad purchase by Bioware, I would guess.
EA just bought up a tiny fraction of the gamespace - partly from a developer who was throwing a desperation pass (imo), with Mass Effect.
PotBS is not an SOE project. Stop spreading this misinformation and strangle whoever you learned it from.
Perpetual wasn't an SOE client.

Perpetual isn't worth buying.

Carry on.

[taolurker]

I don't really think everyone should be freaking out, yet.

This is a proposed purchase and is still in the offer phase. It's not set to be complete until Jan 2008, and hasn't even been approved by the SEC, so it's too early to say anything except EA wants to buy Pandemic and Bioware.

The implications of this proposal are something different, but it's all speculation anyway, since nobody's bought anyone just yet.

I was more interested in the part involving $680 million dollar bids by EA.. Sheesh that's alot of moolah.

[schild]

Eh? Freaking out? This is awesome.

[Ghambit]

Your post doesn't make any fucking sense, newfish.

SOE ran away from GnH because it was _bad_.
SOE has DCU, The Agency, and other things in development.
Bioware simply licensed Perpetuals platform. Or rather, part of it. The chat part or some other senseless bullshit.
That was a bad purchase by Bioware, I would guess.
EA just bought up a tiny fraction of the gamespace - partly from a developer who was throwing a desperation pass (imo), with Mass Effect.
PotBS is not an SOE project. Stop spreading this misinformation and strangle whoever you learned it from.
Perpetual wasn't an SOE client.

Perpetual isn't worth buying.

Carry on.

-SOE had no reason to run away from GnH, they were only "publishing" it.  Perp. ran away from GnH because they themselves knew it sucked.
-PotBS is currently the only MMO SOE is pubbing that 's even on anyone's radar. (i should've been more specific there).  Seeing as how this is all about "WoW-scraps," I'm focusing on near term here.  Besides that... they're pubbing it, that makes it somewhat their project.
-Perpetual WAS an SOE client, since SOE was co-pubbing their game (SOE was paid or would have been paid to pub it).  Even if SOE was only handling distro and marketing, that still makes Perp. their client.
-The Perp. online platform per BIOWARE'S statements was basically to serve as the entire online backbone of their big secret MMO (billing, cust. service, server structure, community support, load, balance.. yada yada) Not just for "chat."  EA now owns this along with simutronics "HeroEngine" since they now own Bioware.
-Perpetual has the rights from PARAMOUNT to develop Star Trek Online, THAT my firend, makes them worth buying.

[Ghambit]

Hey, whadaya know... EA's CEO already had $300 million of his own money invested in Bioware and Pandemic.

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2007/10/electronic_arts_buys_biowarepandemic_for_860_million-2.html