Ehh, I don't know if that's really completely fair to DICE. It's very likely the EA owns the rights to all of their IP's as part of the publishing agreement (a very common practice these days), so if DICE ever wanted to go their own way, they would literally have to start from scratch. They'd need a new IP, a new infrastructure to develop it, probably a lot of new staff since there's no way that kind of move wouldn't split up part of a company... and the whole time, they get to watch EA hand off their series like Battlefield and Mirror's Edge to some other developer to make it without them.Saelune said:I can. If DICE want to live under EA's shitty roof, they will suffer the blame too. Sure, I generally blame EA more than I do DICE (or Bioware) but they also let themselves be crappy developers who fault under EA's thumb.
Then they either have to jump in with another publisher (who will likely make them work on someone else's IP, or require ownership of any new IP they create there), or try to go the independent route and never make the same kind of money or have the same kind of sales numbers again.
It's just a shitty situation all around. The publishing system for videogames (especially the big ones) is just terrible for the actual devs. Gamers too. If a publisher doesn't hand off an IP to someone else after they part ways with a developer, then they'll hoard it like a dragon for years and never let it see the light of day.