Impact: The track record of large publishers paying top dollar for big name developers is not good. A major problem is that development studios are often very dependent on a handful of top talent. Any type of talent-based acquisition is always risky in any field. In the case of Pandemic, it should be noted that the acquisition was part of a package deal with BioWare. BioWare is still very active, including working on development of the Star Wars MMOG. It has always seemed clear that EA was mostly after BioWare and the closure of Pandemic only confirms that suspicion.