Pandemic Studios is a now defunct video game developer which had offices in Los Angeles, California, and Brisbane, Australia. The studio is notable for featuring fully-destructible environments in its games. Recent titles include Full Spectrum Warrior, Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers, Star Wars: Battlefront, Star Wars: Battlefront II, Destroy All Humans!, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction and Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.
History[]
The company's president is Josh Resnick and its CEO is 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 real-time strategy game using the Dark Reign 2 engine. This studio would later develop Destroy All Humans!.
In 2003, the Los Angeles studio moved from its founding location at Santa Monica to a high-rise building in Westwood, Los Angeles, California.
In November 2005, it was announced that Pandemic and BioWare would be joining forces, with private equity fund Elevation Partners investing in the partnership. However, both companies will retain their brands and identities.[1]
On October 11, 2007, it was announced that VG Holding Corp, the owners of Bioware and Pandemic Studios, will be acquired by Electronic Arts as of January 2008, subject to Federal Trade Commission approval.[2]
In 2009, Electronic Arts announced that it had shut down Pandemic Studios. Most of the employees were laid off, however, some of its staff were moved to EA Los Angeles (would then become Danger Close Games, now known as DICE Los Angeles) to work on new games.
Mercenaries games developed[]
- Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction
- Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
- Mercenaries 3: No Limits - Cancelled when Pandemic Studios closed.
References[]
- ↑ Bioware & Pandemic Merge - TotalGaming.net news, 2005-11-03
- ↑ EA To Acquire BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios