Flagship studios closing?

[kandrathe]

Flagship seems to be the most poorly run game developer company since Interplay. They get a contract that forces them into a "release on X date" instead of "wait till it's done". They give up IP rights to something they created. They get too ambitious at the start.

It seems to me most of Flagship's problems have nothing to do with programmers/artists/etc and everything to do with upper management.

Or... Consider the pressure EA placed upon them to release in order to reclaim their investment and profits from package sales. With the post-release coffers tapped by EA, and the released "Alpha" quality product fell on its face, FSS and crew were left to try to sew it together on a shoe string. In the creative gaming business (or any other really), when you sell your soul to the likes of EA, there is hell to pay. I've just never seen cutting corners with software or any artistic endeavor to be fruitful for the art, and only fruitful for the most unscrupulous of investors.

I have relatives who were screwed by SCO, but thats not unusual for SCO. Of course, EA is not unknown in the legal realms of unethical corporate behavior either. Consider EA's history of predatory dealings with Take-Two, DICE, Bioware, Pandemic, Maxis, Origin, Westwood Studios, Bullfrog, or UbiSoft. But, then again, I am biased against EA. I consider EA to be the anti-Midas of the software age, they turn gold into crap.