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EA to buy Pandemic Studios and BioWare

by Richard Mitchell on Oct 11th 2007 5:30PM

Electronic Arts has announced today that it will acquire VG Holding Corp. from Elevation Partners. VG Holding owns both Pandemic Studios and BioWare, which means the deal nabs both developers for EA. Electronic Arts will be paying up to $650 million in cash to the stockholders of VG Holding, with up to $155 million being paid in equity to specific employees. Pandemic is currently hard at work on the excessively violent sandbox title, Mercenaries 2, which is being published by EA. The deal raises questions about BioWare, as the company is currently developing the galaxy hopping RPG Mass Effect for Microsoft Game Studios. As the game is set to be a trilogy, we have to wonder what this deal means for the next two installments.

We'd love to make some sort of Madden RPG joke here (Madden Effect, perhaps?), but we just don't have the energy. Hit the "read" link for the full press release.

[Via Joystiq]

Source

Tags: bioware, ea, electronic-arts, mass-effect, masseffect, mercenaries-2, mercenaries2, pandemic, pandemic-studios, pandemicstudios

Reader Comments (30)

Frickin' EA

Bust out your bibles, qurans, torahs, buddha bellies because it's time to start praying EA doesn't fuck their shit up.

Crap, now we are gonna have more shitty games from EA

This news leaves me non-plussed

Bloody EA. Die already. Stick to making bad Simpson's games, i truly hope they let bioware run on it's own and there's very little difference otherwise it's going to go to crap.

I just threw out in my mouth. Thankfully, MS owns the Mass Effect IP.

It's a trap!!!

Like Jonah said, luckily MS owns the IP of Mass Effect and they can't really do much besides profit from owning Bioware(hopefully).

Why does EA feel the need to gobble up all these companies? It's really starting to piss me off.

Bioware? No. Just... no. C'mon EA, Really? Aren't you content ruining sports franchises, racing games, and FPS's? Now you have to scoop up my favorite RPG maker too?

/sigh

Resistance is futile, it would seem.

It means that Mass Effect 2 & 3 will have hot cars, bikini-clad aliens and a dope techno soundtrack! woooot!

At ^

You mean EA Traxxxxxxxxx!

The next mass effect will have crappy tunes from crapy indie bands with one crappy tune from a crappy big name band. That is the amazing EA Traxxxxx formula.

EA owns Mass Effect now actually...so this is bad news.

Can you people be more ignorant. EA is a publisher, not a developer. They don't create the games, period. All they do is publish them and slap a big EA sticker on it. All of the "shitty" games you buy are from shitty dev teams.

oh well, at least Mass Effect 1 will be great. and then Mass Effect 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 will come out yearly and suck balls. EA sucks.

@13, but their lack of attention to things like..oh i don't know, online problems with like every sports game they "slap their name on" is their fault. fuck em.

^ Bzzzt wrong. EA does develop its own games and then publish them.

Fuck EA

:'( can't we get EA busted for monopolization or something? They're my least favourite publisher, They have so many decent IP's but they always find a way to screw them up... :'(

They act just like MS in the PC world, gobble up all competition and smaller devs, then make them mundane...

I'm boycotting them, but still have to buy Skate and Burnout, it's just like "I boycott MS but still need windows and office" :'(

love it.

EA console in 2010?!!?!

Mass Effect is published by Microsoft Game Studios. So while EA "owns" the IP, Mass Effect is going to be published by Microsoft for the 3 games.

Look up the Wiki.

NOOOOOOOOOO! BIOWARE! NOOOOOOOO! MASS EFFECT! NOOOOOOOO!

okay i'm done.

i stop buying burnout and now no mass effect. i wont say anything bad just hope EA reading these posts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where are those Gov Anti-Trust dudes when you need them. These guys cant compete so they just buy people out. There is only one NFL game because of thier dumb azzes, and now this!

@ 13.

You lack a view on the larger picture. Publishers, although they don't construct games directly, CAN and DO walk into their dev's offices, take a look at something and say "no, we don't like that, change it. You don't like that idea? Fine, we'll can your project or fire you".

BioWare will be pandering to EA's nice, safe, statistical demographic studies and profit/loss charts rather than beeing creative and original.

Well you know what this means...

"Unlock the true ending!, pay 4000 MSpoints to get a code for the TRUE mass effect ending!"

Or some other crap like "Unlock 30 more face options for 200 MSpoints!"

this is why i dont play sports games. because EA owns most of them and EA sucks.

@ 24

Damn right, its a shame, something tells me this also means mercenaries 2 is gonna go to the shithole.

Maybe a Full Spectrum Warrior revival ?

It's easy to hate on EA, but when I really think about it, I don't hate them. Their marketplace strategy notwithstanding, I love the NFS franchise and Burnout. Fight Night and Def Jam Icon were good and so was NBA Street Homecourt. I'm not a Madden player, but what I do play of theirs is solid.

So, when is EA going to rename Bioware to "EA Canada East"?

Breaking News

EA to buy Pandemic Studios and BioWare

Reader Comments (30)

Posted: Oct 11th 2007 5:37PM eJ24 said

Posted: Oct 11th 2007 5:42PM (Unverified) said

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Posted: Oct 11th 2007 5:42PM Hockle said

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Posted: Oct 11th 2007 5:44PM JonahFalcon said

Posted: Oct 11th 2007 5:54PM Yuccadude said

Posted: Oct 11th 2007 5:55PM cwfutureboy said

Posted: Oct 11th 2007 5:56PM itsburnsie said

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Posted: Oct 11th 2007 6:35PM mirage said

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Posted: Oct 12th 2007 8:40AM lemkeant said

Posted: Oct 11th 2007 7:54PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 11th 2007 8:26PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 11th 2007 8:37PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 11th 2007 9:29PM JonahFalcon said

Posted: Oct 11th 2007 9:53PM DjDATZ said

Posted: Oct 12th 2007 12:06AM (Unverified) said

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Posted: Oct 12th 2007 8:44AM xenocidic said

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