Electronic Arts today announced that they have acquired Edmonton’s very own BioWare Corp. in a deal that could be worth $860 million USD. More accurately, EA is buying VG Holding, the parent company of both BioWare and Pandemic Studios. From GameSpot:
VG Holding Corp. was formed in late 2005 when esteemed Canadian role-playing game studio BioWare formed the aforementioned “superdeveloper” with Californian shop Pandemic Studios. The union was funded by Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm with rock star Bono on its board, and brokered by then-Elevation board member John Riccitiello, who became BioWare/Pandemic’s CEO.
A number of articles today have mentioned the fact that John Riccitiello left Elevation in February to become the CEO of Electronic Arts. So essentially, he has purchased BioWare and Pandemic twice. He must really like their games!
This is a great move for Electronic Arts. I’m sure fans of both BioWare’s and Pandemic’s games will have some reservations about the deal though. Will EA cause the studios to lose their mojo? I guess we’ll find out. Both companies will become part of the EA Games division, but Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka will continue to run BioWare, and Andrew Goldman, Josh Resnick, and Greg Borrud will stay in charge of Pandemic, according to GameSpot. At least for the time being.
The official BioWare press release is here (PDF).
Read: GameSpot
MasterMaq's Blog 
*cry*
Bioware owned by a US corp AND it being EA of all US corps.
Blech. There went the neighborhood.
didn’t EA start in Vancouver?
anyway, while I have many reservations, and we all know how much I "like" EA, I can’t help but admit that EA’s been cleaning up their reputation pretty well lately too. They seem more interested in investing and the money side of things as opposed to actually putting their grubby hands in the actual design process.
Either way, we shall see in the coming months after Mass Effect comes out what Bioware plans to do for their next few games. If it’s anything Ubisoft-ish (a la Baldur’s Gate 3, 4, 5, along with more garbage Rainbow Six games), I’m going to just burn the building down, it’s a humane death.
Another typical EA gamer “middle finger” EA cannot make decent games so they try to steal everyones elses work and slap their name on it. I will never again purchase any title connected to EA no matter who they take over , EA has no act to clean up btw . This is like saying they can change the color of their skin. WONT ever happen.
Just avoid everything EA if you have a iq above 3 .