EA’s Patrick Söderlund has confirmed that Danger Close, the studio responsible for the recent Medal of Honour Franchise, has been dismantled.
The news came as no surprise due to the fact many of the senior figureheads from the studio’s departments had already moved on earlier in the year, or had stated on their LinkedIn profiles that they had abruptly finished their tenure with EA.
Speaking with Eurogamer, the Executive Vice President of EA Games Label and Bioware stated that the studio had now been dissolved.
“Danger Close as it was doesn’t exist anymore,” Söderlund said. “There are people who left L.A., people who work with DICE L.A., and there are some who work in other parts of EA, as always when something gets dismantled. It’s a way for us to expand the DICE universe, to be able to do more. They are helping. Who knows where this will take them long term? Right now they’re focused on helping,” he said.
“Frankly, it’s about talent. Where can we find the right talent and people we think have critical skills we need? When you’re in Sweden, Stockholm is a gigantic gaming city with DICE and Mojang and all the other companies, but we realised we needed to extend our reach if we wanted to get to the breadth of talent we wanted. Since the DICE LA announcement we had a lot of pressure on that studio from people who want to come work there. And after E3, as you can probably imagine, there will be more.”
DICE LA has been set up as a support studio to it’s core development team in Stockholm. Söderlund gave DLC and Premium Services as examples as to the types of work the studio will be involved with. DICE is currently working on the soon to be released Battlefield 4, along with the newly announced Mirrors Edge 2 and Star Wars Battlefront for next-gen platforms.
