14 DAY TRIAL // It seems like the 1,500 employees that EA laid off last week aren't nearly enough to make the company feel secure about its financial future. Another cog in the EA machine has been discarded, as game studio Pandemic has been shut down by its owning company. Rumors that started creeping about yesterday regarding the death of Pandemic turned out to be right on the money. The now-deceased game developer is responsible for titles such as Destroy All Humans, Full Spectrum Warrior, Mercenaries, and Star Wars: Battlefront. A currently-under-development project of the company is The Saboteur, which, according to Kotaku, will be transferred over to EA Montreal, the guys that made Army of Two, Skate It, and Spore Hero.
The confirmation came from anonymous sources at Pandemic that talked to 1up, but also from a company memo that was intercepted by Gamasutra. The memo announces that Pandemic founders Josh Resnick, Andrew Goldman, and Greg Borrud will leave the company and the Pandemic workers that didn't get the boot will be transferred to EA LA. The shut-down of Pandemic is expected to "accelerate our transformation to a direct-to-consumer digital model, and to better manage our cost structure," the memo says.
EA Senior VP Nick Earl assures us that Pandemic will continue to be a vivid memory in our heads, as several Pandemic franchises will persevere. "I want to make it clear that the Pandemic brand and franchises will live on. In the months ahead, we will announce plans for new games based on Pandemic franchises," Nick Earl shares. Electronic Arts acquired Pandemic and BioWare two years ago for $860 millions, so it seems like Pandemic signed its own death warrant, even if it didn't knew it at the time.
Pandemic Studios isn't included in the 1,500 jobs closed by EA last week, so it seems like the number of people that the publisher left without a job is even bigger than we originally thought. The two events were probably separated on purpose to try to avoid unveiling the giant figure to the public. Not that 1,500 isn't big enough already.