Part of EA Games now

I was part of Ubisoft when EA threatened to buy Ubisoft. They ended up buying only a portion of Ubi's actions. People were scared of all the repercussions that this buyout would entail.
People were afraid of EA's reputation for putting out sequels after sequels, long crunch weeks and bad working conditions. People didn't want to lose their "freedom" to create new and exciting games.

Now I'm part of EA Games after they bought us (Pandemic).

People had the same kind of fear and questions about EA's ways to do business. We met with EA's president and EA Games' director who answered all our questions as best as they could. It helped us understand what they wanted to do with us and how we would be an integral part inside EA.

Over the last year, EA has changed a lot, I believe. EA is making new IP an integral part of their projects throughout all of their developpers. Yes we will still have the nth iteration of Need for Speed and sports game, but people want them anyways. They have resolved issues with crunches or are trying to (EA spouse), they are doing new games (Army of Two, Boogie, ...) and they delay games that need it instead of pushing out unfinished games.

I'm hopeful that EA will bring something good for Pandemic (worldwide publisher, experience, ...), but we will see the repercussions in the next year.

Until then check out previews of Saboteur ;)