NOV. 17, 2009 • As part of a pledge to trim 1,500 jobs by April 2010 in order to cut costs, Electronic Arts shut down its Westwood-based Pandemic Studio. Around 25 of Pandemic’s 225 employees were to be relocated to the nearby EA Los Angeles facility. EA acquired Pandemic and BioWare Corp. for $775 million in 2007. Despite such closures, the Atlanta Business Journal reported on Dec. 22 that EA was scouting the metro Atlanta area for a development center that could employ up to 300 people.

Impact:  The track record of large publishers paying top dollar for big name developers is not good.  A major problem is that development studios are often very dependent on a handful of top talent.  Any type of talent-based acquisition is always risky in any field.  In the case of Pandemic, it should be noted that the acquisition was part of a package deal with BioWare.  BioWare is still very active, including working on development of the Star Wars MMOG.  It has always seemed clear that EA was mostly after BioWare and the closure of Pandemic only confirms that suspicion.