EA refutes Oddworld acquisition attempt, suggests Lithium for Lanning EA essentially says that Lorne Lanning's story about EA trying to buy Oddworld is made up

James Brightman Monday 1st October 2012 Share this article Share

Companies in this article Electronic Arts Oddworld Inhabitants

In an interview published earlier today on GamesIndustry International, Oddworld Inhabitants founder Lorne Lanning stated that he was approached by Electronic Arts to buy his studio during the somewhat difficult development of Stranger's Wrath. EA, however, has now told us that this just didn't happen.

"When you say that to us we go 'f**k you very much', quite frankly. That's not a sustainable model, that's a hostile acquisition," Lanning said of EA's plan to acquire the team. "That's why we had to strive to get independent. Rather than get into bed with someone we knew was a horrible bed partner we said 'let's stay virgins for longer'."

Lanning also hinted at the idea that the money made on triple-A games at companies like EA is used to buy luxury cars and private jets, rather than for the investment in future projects.

Jeff Brown, corporate spokesman for EA, refutes everything Lanning said in the interview. "We wish Lorne luck on the game and recommend Lithium for the paranoia and Tourette Syndrome. Nobody here remembers a jet, a Ferrari or an offer to buy his company," he told us.

This is clearly a relationship that's still strained. Lanning, meanwhile, is just enjoying being 100 percent independent thanks to digital distribution. "On the micro-publisher level it's very simple. We fund our own products. We weren't able to do that in the boxed product days, we're only able to do that in the digital distribution landscape," he said.