Pandemic Studios

Pandemic Studios

Former type	Subsidiary of Electronic Arts
Founded	Santa Monica, California (1998)
Defunct	2009
Headquarters	Los Angeles, California
Key people	Andrew Goldman, CEO Josh Resnick, President
Industry	Software & Programming
Products	Full Spectrum Warrior Star Wars: Battlefront (I & II) Destroy All Humans! (1 & 2) Mercenaries series (See complete products listing)
Website	www.pandemicstudios.com

Pandemic Studios was founded as an independent developer in 1998, it became a Electronic Arts-owned developer from 2007 to 2009, when it was officially closed. It was an American video game developer with offices in Los Angeles, California. Notable titles include Full Spectrum Warrior, Star Wars: Battlefront, Destroy All Humans! and Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.

History

The company's president was Josh Resnick and its CEO was Andrew Goldman — both formerly worked at Activision, and Pandemic was founded with an equity investment by Activision in 1998. Pandemic's first two games, Battlezone II and Dark Reign 2, were both sequels to Activision games.

In 2000, Pandemic opened a satellite studio in the Brisbane suburb of Fortitude Valley. The first project was Army Men RTS, a console RTS game using the Dark Reign 2 engine. The studio later developed Destroy All Humans!.

In 2003, the Los Angeles studio moved from its founding location at Santa Monica to a high-rise building in Westwood.

In November 2005, it was announced that Pandemic and BioWare would be joining forces, with private equity fund Elevation Partners investing in the partnership. Both companies retained their brands and identities.^[1]

On October 11, 2007, it was announced that VG Holding Corp, the owners of Bioware and Pandemic Studios, would be acquired by Electronic Arts as of January 2008, subject to FTC approval.^[2]

In February 2009, their office in Brisbane, Australia was shut down.^[3]

In November 2009, Electronic Arts cut a total of 1500 jobs which affected various studios, including a complete shutdown of Pandemic. On November 17, 2009, EA officially confirmed Pandemic Studios' closure, laying off 228 employees. EA absorbed 35 Pandemic employees to support The Saboteur and an unannounced project which was later revealed to be Mercs Inc, a sequel to the Mercenaries series.^[4][5] In response, a few former employees of Pandemic created an Office Space-style video where they are shown smashing their office printer.^[6] The remaining staff have been shifted to EA Los Angeles and are developing Mercs Inc under the Pandemic Studios brand.

Teams

At the time of closing, several development teams existed inside Pandemic:

• Full Spectrum Warrior team, responsible for the original game as well as its sequel, Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers.
• Star Wars team, who developed the Star Wars: Battlefront series,
• Mercenaries team which was developing Mercs Inc, a new title in the Mercenaries series.
• The Saboteur team, who developed the game The Saboteur which is a new title chronicling the adventures of a Resistance fighter during WWII.
• The Brisbane Team was working on many projects, including Projects B and Q, The Dark Knight video game, and The Next Big Thing, an episodic Wii game, when their branch was closed. All the games they had in production were canceled. The team was the first team part of Pandemic Studios to close, closing in 2008, one year prior to the main studios' closing.

Games

Pandemic Studios developed the first two main titles of the successful Star Wars: Battlefront series namely Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: Battlefront II as well as Full Spectrum Warrior and the Mercenaries series. The studio also developed the last game in the Army Men series published by 3DO, Army Men RTS. The studio was also responsible for developing the first two games in the Destroy All Humans! series. The studio's final project released was The Saboteur.

At time of closure the studio still had multiple projects in development namely Project X and Y which are listed on Pandemic's official site. Project X has been listed since 2007 while Project Y was recently listed in 2009. Soon after the studio's closure it was revealed that Project Y was Mercs Inc, a new title in the Mercenaries series which is being developed by Pandemic Studios at EALA, the Project Y listing on the official site disappeared when the game was announced.^[4] Many projects that were being developed at Pandemic's Brisbane studios were also cancelled when it closed including The Dark Knight and two unannounced games, Project B and Q.

References

External links

• Official website