Pandemic Studios: EA acquisition won’t negatively affect game development

Pandemic Studios and BioWare are currently on the hotseat after Electronic Arts‘ shocking acquisition of both development studios, and we’re fortunate enough that they’re giving answers to fans who aren’t very happy. In an interview, Pandemic made it pretty clear that the partnership with EA won’t hinder the developers from being creative.

According to Pandemic chief production officer Greg Borrud, nothing is changing in how Pandemic develops games or what games they choose to develop. He also adds that the acquisition will not break the company’s “core pillars of building big brands”, regular game events, or their ability to attract the best talent in the industry.

Co-founder and president Josh Resnick continued, saying that EA probably wanted to buy them because of Pandemic’s “ability to be creative… and to really stretch our limits and innovative, and to really focus on creating blockbuster original IPs.” He stressed out that new and original IPs will be coming without restrictions from EA.

What Pandemic can learn from the partnership, as Resnick sees it, is how to have a powerful marketing organization and make franchises go forward by spinning out many games. Pandemic CEO Andrew Goldman and Borrud agree that passing technology around is another positive draw to the US$ 860 million deal with a publishing giant like EA.

Aside from having access to support from Electronic Arts, Pandemic big wigs say nothing much will be changed in the development pipeline. Hopefully, we won’t be seeing annual Destroy All Humans! titles or titles like Mercenaries 09 any time soon.

Pandemic Studios and BioWare are currently on the hotseat after Electronic Arts‘ shocking acquisition of both development studios, and we’re fortunate enough that they’re giving answers to fans who aren’t very happy. In an interview, Pandemic made it pretty clear that the partnership with EA won’t hinder the developers from being creative.

According to Pandemic chief production officer Greg Borrud, nothing is changing in how Pandemic develops games or what games they choose to develop. He also adds that the acquisition will not break the company’s “core pillars of building big brands”, regular game events, or their ability to attract the best talent in the industry.

Co-founder and president Josh Resnick continued, saying that EA probably wanted to buy them because of Pandemic’s “ability to be creative… and to really stretch our limits and innovative, and to really focus on creating blockbuster original IPs.” He stressed out that new and original IPs will be coming without restrictions from EA.

What Pandemic can learn from the partnership, as Resnick sees it, is how to have a powerful marketing organization and make franchises go forward by spinning out many games. Pandemic CEO Andrew Goldman and Borrud agree that passing technology around is another positive draw to the US$ 860 million deal with a publishing giant like EA.

Aside from having access to support from Electronic Arts, Pandemic big wigs say nothing much will be changed in the development pipeline. Hopefully, we won’t be seeing annual Destroy All Humans! titles or titles like Mercenaries 09 any time soon.