Electronic Arts Inc. just announced an agreement with Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holding Corp. -- the owner of both BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios, two game developers formerly known as fiercely independent and well recognized for creating some of the highest-quality games in the industry.

The deal includes ten game franchises under development at BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios, including six wholly owned games. BioWare Corp. is currently developing the highly anticipated Mass Effect, which will be published by Microsoft in November exclusively for Xbox 360. Reportedly, BioWare is also in the early development stages of a massively multiplayer online game. Pandemic Studios, meanwhile, is about ready to release Mercenaries 2: World in Flames and Saboteur.

Pandemic Studios and BioWare Corp. employ roughly 800 people across four studios located in Edmonton, Alberta; Los Angeles, California; Austin, Texas; and Brisbane, Australia. Both were once considered to represent the last vestige of independent games development at its finest, creating wholly original, deep and amazing games while the mega publishing houses busied themselves with internal development of sequels of sequels of sequels and schlock knock-offs of wholly original, deep and amazing games.

"These are two of the most respected studios in the industry and I'm glad to be working with them again," said John Riccitiello, EA's Chief Executive Officer, who originally crafted the "creative and management partnership" with Pandemic Studios and BioWare Corp as the aforementioned VG Holding Corp. Riccitiello did that after resigning as President of Electronic Arts, but before signing back on as CEO of Electronic Arts. Follow? Anyway: "They'll make a strong contribution to our strategic growth initiatives on quality, online gaming and developing new intellectual properties," Riccitiello continued. "We also expect this will drive long-term value for our shareholders."

The news mostly shocked the videogame industry, in much the same way as news about "hell freezing over" might.

In a lengthy, two-part interview at GameDailyBIZ (biz.gamedaily.com), BioWare's Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka and Pandemic's Josh Resnick and Greg Borrud seemed to be jumping on couches, firing off keywords like "enhanced," "grander scale," "very supportive," "marketing acumen," and "incredible resources" like they were going out of style, at least one choice paradoxical gem like "independent force within the larger organization of EA," and one Freudian foreshadowing of megapublisher habits of sequels and knock-offs already taking root with "spreading the goodness and getting more stuff that people can use and share, and getting good pieces of games in other games..."

The transaction is expected to close in January 2008 to the tune of about $775 million.