EA plan to destroy DICE from the inside..

Winters

Got this in my inbox from DICE this morning...

Statement of the Board of Directors of Digital Illusions CE AB (publ)

The Board of Directors of Digital Illusions CE AB (publ) has reviewed the public offer of SEK 61 [€6.81 approx] per Series A share in cash, which Electronic Arts Inc. "EA" made public today, through one of its Swedish subsidiaries.

The Board has evaluated the conditions for the offer. The evaluation leads the Board to make the following statement.

In light of the challenges that the game industry faces, with increased development costs and the coming technological change, the Board is of the opinion that a merger between Digital Illusions and EA is industrially and strategically correct. EA can bring the technology and resources that make possible and facilitate the transition to the new game platforms.

On behalf of the Board, Nordea Corporate Finance has evaluated the public offer of SEK 61 [€6.81 approx] per Series A share to Digital Illusions shareholders and has, in a report to the Board, expressed the opinion that the offered price is fair from a financial point of view.

Based on a collective assessment, the Board is of the opinion that the offer is fair and has therefore unanimously decided to recommend the shareholders of Digital Illusions to accept the offer.

Stockholm, November 15, 2004

Digital Illusions CE AB (publ)

The Board of Directors

It appears EA wish to swollow up another software house and destroy them. If they do takeover DICE and try treat DICE like other EA employees this could most certainly see the end of DICE as they once were... maybe a more common and sorry end to another games company.

bizmark

It would be a shame to see dice go the way of bullfrog or westwood but at the end of the day battlefield will go on and EA isnt as bad as every one makes out

Jim

bizmark wrote:

It would be a shame to see dice go the way of bullfrog or westwood but at the end of the day battlefield will go on and EA isnt as bad as every one makes out

Like C&C went on?

Winters

bizmark wrote:

EA isnt as bad as every one makes out

Did you not read this? EA are just out to make money whichever way they can really. They dont care about games the way the small software houses do. They want games released on a date reguardless of how buggy/unfinished it is etc. BFV was really a half finished game when it was released. Id say if DICE had their way they would have had an extra few months to fix the many bugs that existed in the first release. Though they will probably never say it publically.

EA are too large a company to be fought by the smaller software houses. If you look at the games released by smaller publishers they are, on the whole a lot more stable and finished then the vast majority of EA products. This would be mostly tdue to the way EA operate. Making your employees work 90 hours weeks is not good for a game, bugs will begin to appear all over the place as nobody can sit there for 12 hours a day coding correctly (I can vouch for this after Red Bed, trust me).

Anyway, i might finish this post later or something. Im starving.

satchmo

Gah the faceless EA raping goes on... although if I was the blokes in DICE, I'd take EA's money and then leave the company as soon as possible to start another studio... but I'm sure it's not as simple as that.

ChRoMe

I'd consider 84 hour working weeks in crunch mode (when the project is offically on schedule) without time in lieu or getting over-time extremely bad. They do all that and manage to turn out complete crap 90% of the time. EA are worse than most people say becuase I dont think we know the half of how poxy they are.

ChRoMe

bizmark

Well come on who didn’t see it happening? Ea is like a black hole sucking in all the development houses in the business once Dice started making AAA titles with EA they where going to be bought out every one knew this in the back of their mind no point acting surprised about it now tbh.

And no I didn’t read that link I don’t really care how ea treats their employees tbh

satchmo

bizmark wrote:

And no I didn’t read that link I don’t really care how ea treats their employees tbh

Well if you care about the quality of the games produced by EA (which will now include Battlefield it seems), then you should care about how the employees are treated.

Burnt out, overworked, underpaid emplyees == crap, bug-ridden, unfinished products.

the_syco

Read the link. Not surprised.

Look @ Half-life 2. It has been devolped for 4 or 5 years. Most games are only made in 2 years or less.
Halflife 2 is making an entire new game engine. Most games use the same engine.

Oh yeah; the original Valve crew are mostly ex-Microsoft programmers. They made their money in MS, quit, and set up their own games company.