By Kieron Gillen on October 12th, 2007 at 3:50 pm.
But enough about really old Your Sinclair Gags which about four people in our readership will get. Electronic Arts has bought Bioware and Pandemic, in an exciting two-for-one offer. Let’s quote the bit about the money, as money is all that matters in our world.
EA will pay up to $620 million in cash to the stockholders of VG Holding Corp. and will issue up to an additional $155 million in equity to certain employees of VG Holding Corp., which will be subject to time-based or performance-based vesting criteria. EA will also assume outstanding VG Holding Corp. stock options. In addition, EA has agreed to lend VG Holding Corp. up to $35 million through the closing of the acquisition.
Er… VG Holding group is the kind of corporate structure for Bioware/Pandemic. What’s notable about this deal is that it follows closely from 2005, where Elevation invested 300 million in forming the Bioware/Pandemic partnership in the first place. Hmm.
Oh – interviews on the sale over at Gamespot from Bioware and Gamedaily for Pandemic.
Well, at least we’ll get Baldur’s Gate 3 now. And Baldur’s Gate 4, 5, 6, 7 and Baldur’s Gate: Kobold Baseball 2012…
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… hold me. I’m afraid.
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You mean Baldur’s Gate 08, 09… etc, surely?
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Well we all know Baldur’s Gate 2k8 will be better anyway
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Except of course that the D&D license is held by someone else. (I have no idea who. ATARI?)
So we’ll Get Labdur’s Entrance 08 instead, set in the Remembered Kingdoms setting.
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Joking aside, I’m more worried about the implications for the KotOR MMORPG Bioware were rumored to be making… Can you really see LucasArts wanting an EA-owned company making a Star Wars game?
No, me neither. Still, on the plus side, at least it means no more Battlefront games.
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At what point should we start calling you “The Award Winning Kieron Gillen” anyway?
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I’d already won an award.
And a real one too.
KG
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At least you can use the new one as a handy paperweight.
Or doorstop.
Or throw it at kids poking around in the garden. Bloody kids.
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Darth Vader ‘nooooooooo!’ anyone?
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Great disturbance in the force, millions of voices suddenly silenced, et cetera.
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are the D&D/Star Wars licences even ongoing things, or are they awarded to developers on a case by case basis?
also, i miss the old TSR intro logo splash thingy…..big dragons and stuff. rarrr
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The licenses are owned by publishers (who probably have them bought for a limited time). For example ATARI owns the D&D license right now and had Troika develop Temple of Elemental Evil, BioWare develop Neverwinter Nights, Obsidian develop Nieverwinter Nights 2 and Turbien develop D&D Online. All of these games are published by Atari but developed by, either in-house teams or independent teams.
Star Wars is the same. LucasArts publishes all the games but the games themselves are made by different studios (Knights of the old Republic by Bioware, Knights of the Old Republic 2 by Obsidian)
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Oh ffs. I assume we have to watch out language here, or I’d probably hit the character limit with expletives…
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Yes, I want to play to a better
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please find our electric trike:
http://electric-tricycle.electric-bicycle.de/
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