Ex-Employee: Closing Pandemic Was 'Right Decision'

19 Nov 2009 at 11:21:17 by Tim McDonald

An anonymous Pandemic employee has claimed that EA execs "probably made the right decision" to close Pandemic.

In case you missed it, EA "relocated" Pandemic earlier this week, firing 200 employees and moving the Pandemic name to EA LA's Playa Vista offices, following the completion of The Saboteur. A few of the newly-unemployed have now posted about their experiences over on NeoGAF.

"The reason why the studio closed down has everything to do with the existing Pandemic management," writes one under the name of Zeenbor. "From what we were told, Pandemic management was given free reign to do as they please. Time and time again, they dropped the ball with bad decisions (promoting/keeping people based on loyalty, no production accountability, misallocation of resources, poor milestone objectives, no mentoring, etc.)"

Zeenbor continues: "I wouldn't necessarily hate on JR [John Riccitiello] and EA's execs just yet. In my eyes, they probably made the right decision as Pandemic cost a lot to upkeep and, quite frankly, the last few products weren't up to snuff."

"One more thing I will say," concludes Zeenbor. "EA is totally sending Saboteur out to die. And it's a fucking shame. It's easily Pandemic's best game yet. Of course, I am a bit biased having worked on the game for so long. If you were disappointed with Mercs2 and LOTR (who wasn't) and enjoyed previous Pandemic games, give Saboteur a shot."

There's a little more in the post itself, which you can read over on NeoGAF. As for Saboteur, we'll let you know what we think before too long.

Thanks to CVG for this.