EA to acquire BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios

Yep, BioWare owns the Mass Effect brand.

Great pic!!! I see it as basically...somebodies fucked..
Seal = bioware, pandemic (us as gamers)
Great White = EA

I could care less who did the buying. Anytime I see a corporate buyout or merger it breaks my heart. I wish this sort of thing were illegal.

But, you know what? The fact that it's EA doing the buying DOES make this worse.

Whats the over/under on them having contacted Bungie already?

There is nothing shocking about this. John Riccitello was the CEO of EA, left and co-founded Elevation Partners, and returned to EA. If anything, this was obvious.

EA gutted the Dev staff of my fav game, Ultima Online, and is moving or has already moved UO's offices from CA to VA. EA just moved UO's office staff from Texas a year or two ago to California! UO although well behind newer and larger MMOs it had to have been a money maker through the past 10 years. But to do this, laying off Devs with years of history and experience with the product is extremely short sighted and cannot do anything but hurt the game before long. EA is making fewer (newer) people do the jobs of many more who also had much more experiece in the game's community and lore. Being in VA will put remaining staff under even greater control from the EA bottom line minded managers. The loyalty of this game's players trancends that of many MMOs yet it is getting the short end of the deal here. Speculation mostly puts it as a cost cutting measure for all EAs games to make up for EA's $620 million acquisition. I hate to be cynical about it but it is hard not to be suspicious of EAs motives and their trampeling good products (i.e. using them up) and discarding them when no longer profitable enough. We can only hope that new small non-EA developers will have success in creating fun games and at the same time not sell out the soul of their game to a behemoth uttering sweet words but who really want to just milk the hot game then throw it by the road side as they keep marching along towards the almighty dollar sign. Keep championing the little guys who are making good games!