In a recent interview with Portfolio, Bobby Kotick, Activision's CEO, had some pretty nasty things to say about Electronic Arts; specifically that the videogame publishing giant has "taken the soul out" of many studios that it acquires.
Today EA vice president of corporate communications Jeff Brown responded on Newsweek's excellent LevelUp blog, denying the soul-stealing accusations with a laugh.
"The truth is, everyone laughed," said Brown. "In the past year EA has made radical changes to decentralize the company and put creative control back in the hands of development teams. It's too early to declare victory but if you talk to people like Patrick Soderlund at dice in Stockholm, Mark Jacobs at Mythic in Virginia or Josh Resnick at Pandemic--they'll probably tell you that it's working. They get a lot of resources and creative freedom. That freedom has already contributed new start-ups like Dead Space, Mirror's Edge and Boom Blox and there's a lot of others to be announced soon...We've got a lot of work to do--internal and external--to let people know that EA has changed."
"While we don't steal development companies' souls, We do steal human souls," Brown did not say later, "But that's because we are undead wraiths who feed on the spiritual-energy of the living. It has nothing to do with gaming."
LevelUp: War of Wordcraft: After Repeated Shots From Activision CEO, Electronic Arts Finally Fires Back
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