Digital Illusions Sells to EA

A story we have reported on frequently in the last few months comes to an end as Digital Illusions accepts EA's bid for buyout. From the article at GameGossip: "Corresponding to 32.0% of outstanding capital and votes, in addition to a further acquisition of 898,264 shares and the 18.9% already held by the company, Electronic Arts now holds a total of 6,044,720 shares, a controlling interest representing 59.8% of the outstanding capital and votes in DICE."

Re:Tired of EA

[lastninja]

It should be noted that a big minority, voted against selling. I believe close to 10% opposed the bid.

Goodbye DICE Canada

[LordZardoz]

I used to work for DICE Canada. I was an employee at Sandbox / DICE Canada for about 2.5 years (it was called Sandbox Studios before it was purchased by DICE).

Once the studio was purchased, there were a few rounds of layoffs. I was one of them. From what former co-workers have told me, it appears that any sort of game development at DICE Canada is mostly an afterthought. The Big New Games are developed in Sweeden. DICE Canada gets to pump out expansion packs and the like. To be fair, that is a huge improvement over the sort of games that were developed when it was still called Sandbox.

Now that DICE is pretty much owned by EA, the Canadian studio in London Ontario is pretty much redundant. It was initially setup so that DICE would have a foothold in North America, making it easier to interact with North American publishers. EA has better facilities in Vancouver. I can see nothing preventing EA from folding the London Ontario studio and relocating everyone to Vancouver or just laying off those who dont want to move.

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