Pandemic Studios to be closed? - see article

[Feared_1]

Whoa, I decide to check the forums today to see what's new in the BZ2 world and I find this.

That's sad.

[sabrebattletank]

The best of luck to you! You've got our support.

[lucky_foot]

I've heard of a lot of companies come and go, all make games that I liked, but I took a really bad blow when I heard that Pandemic was going to be shut down.

I was totally shocked and I'm still trying to recover.

@GSH,

Which company are you working for now?

[technoid]

Sorry to hear about this too, what a surprise, end of an era indeed.   Just like a lot of us here who work/worked at corporate, I know how it also feels to be "let go" (after dodging the layoff cycles for almost a decade, heh).  Good luck to Nathan  (and Ken) in all their post-Pandemic employment endeavors. 

@Ken:   What is your Facebook profile?  I can add you there, I'm already a friend with Pandemic.  Been at Facebook since 2004, when registration was still only limited to some companies and [college] students before opening up to the rest of the public a couple years ago. 

[GSH]

@GSH,

Which company are you working for now?

As above, I don't start my new job until early December. So, I'm technically unemployed at the moment.

-- GSH

[squirrelof09]

Wish you much support getting the new career! I don't think you mentioned this on the IRC, either.

[Wraith]

Does this mean support for BattlezoneII ends? 

[Nielk1]

Does this mean support for BattlezoneII ends? 

We are the support. It officially ended a long time ago.

[Wraith]

O ok good. Could use some advice on beating the mission where you have to retrieve the scion commander near the crashed dropship which im stuck on and base gets killed.

[lucky_foot]

There hasn't been support for quite awhile now. Come to think of it, I think when you install the 1.2 patch it used to void any support as it was an unofficial patch never made official or something like that.

[technoid]

O ok good. Could use some advice on beating the mission where you have to retrieve the scion commander near the crashed dropship which im stuck on and base gets killed.

If you mean "Fanning the Fire" mission, there have been a few threads on it here on different ways to beat it.  Try this one:  http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum/index.php?&topic=9776.0

Yeah, Pandemic "official" support for BZII died about 7-8 years ago.

[Shadow Knight]

I just hope EA doesn't make try to make a Battlezone 3. They're (in general) strongly against modding/unofficial patches, meaning it won't be able to have our support to keep the life in it like with BZ2.

Not to mention they could bundle malware with it in the form of the broken idea of "digital rights management". I could go on for a whole 2000+ words about that but this isn't the place.

[GSH]

News has made slashdot: http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/11/20/0440236/EA-Shuts-Down-Pandemic-Studios-Cuts-200-Jobs .

As usual, some BZ2 love and hate in that thread.

-- GSH

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Our thoughts and prayers are with every one of you. Things, will work out just fine I'm sure. A moment of silence please....

[Avatar]

I'm not going to say what company I'll be working for quite yet; I want to see what their policy on side projects (read: BZ2) is. I'll just say that it's listed on http://www.gamedevmap.com/index.php?tool=location&query=Austin .

-- GSH

Blizzard Austin!  Coming soon, "World of Battlezone", the MMRPFPSRTSG to end all MMRPFPSRTSG's!!!   (Massively Multiplayer Role Playing First Person Shooting Real Time Strategy Game)     

Humour aside when a game company closes it's always blamed on mismanagement...  I mean, it's not usually the coders and artists that determine the course of a game, it's the Project Designers and Managers, right?  It's all happened before and will probably happen again...

The whole world is cutting back, closing down, pruning the branches.  It's been a long time coming and it's mostly due to the continuing evolution of the Industrial Revolution.   Mankind needs to come up with new ways for people to earn livings if they're going to continue to depend so much on robots, and push productivity over all else.  What happens on that final day when one person working can produce everything humanity needs?  Old George will push the button and it'll all roll out assembly lines, but nobody will be able to buy it because only George has a job.  (working for Spacely Sprockets, if you don't get who George is by now...)

On a personal note it sounds like both Ken and Nathan have hit the ground running...  I hope everyone here expresses hope for their future, and thanks for the work they've done.  Even if GSH's new job (or any other reason) shuts him down from working on BZ2 any further he's already given us an amazing gift in 1.3 just the way it is now.

-Av-