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Digital Illusions Sells to EA
A story we have reported on frequently in the last few months comes to an end as Digital Illusions accepts EA's bid for buyout. From the article at GameGossip: "Corresponding to 32.0% of outstanding capital and votes, in addition to a further acquisition of 898,264 shares and the 18.9% already held by the company, Electronic Arts now holds a total of 6,044,720 shares, a controlling interest representing 59.8% of the outstanding capital and votes in DICE."
Im so tired of EA. They may release 1 out of every 3 or 4 games in total, but its just plain sickening. I would rather have a fewer number of good games rather than a higher number of not so good games. By them buying up all the other game dev shops around, it is pretty much going to ensure that the indie developer and the small developer either get bought up and eaten by gamezilla, or are not able to compete even with a good game. bleh.
With the great working environment, flexible hours, and employee benefits at EA how can this not be good for DICE? oh wait never mind..
Does anyone at EA realize that you can be too big? Look at Walmart. Walmart can't do anything right because every group in the world is watching them. Soon EA will have everybody watching them. You get too big, you have to keep gobbling everything up just to stay alive. Long live the indies!
I used to work for DICE Canada. I was an employee at Sandbox / DICE Canada for about 2.5 years (it was called Sandbox Studios before it was purchased by DICE).
Once the studio was purchased, there were a few rounds of layoffs. I was one of them. From what former co-workers have told me, it appears that any sort of game development at DICE Canada is mostly an afterthought. The Big New Games are developed in Sweeden. DICE Canada gets to pump out expansion packs and the like. To be fair, that is a huge improvement over the sort of games that were developed when it was still called Sandbox.
Now that DICE is pretty much owned by EA, the Canadian studio in London Ontario is pretty much redundant. It was initially setup so that DICE would have a foothold in North America, making it easier to interact with North American publishers. EA has better facilities in Vancouver. I can see nothing preventing EA from folding the London Ontario studio and relocating everyone to Vancouver or just laying off those who dont want to move.
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