Crikey. Let’s backtrack a little. Yesterday an ex-employee of EA named Ben Cousins told Twitter that Mirror’s Edge 2’s current development at DICE was “general knowledge” in the Stockholm game dev scene. For a while there, the internet rejoiced. But now DICE’s technical director for Frostbite 2 has tweeted an apparent response, and it’s not good news.
Said DICE’s Stefan Boburg in a tweet picked up by Reddit: “Never trust a man who badmouths and talks down all his ex-employers… but still attempts to gain credibility by association #nohire”
Boburg named no names, but his comment followed less than four hours after Cousins’ initial tweet. Among those who retweeted the apparent rebuttal were three DICE employees, including Battlefield 3 lead designer Gustav Halling and rendering architect Johan Andersson.
Cousins is head of ngmoco Sweden, but before that was general manager at EA Easy Studios, them of Battlefield Play4Free. As noted yesterday, Cousins was cautioned by EA last year following his departure; the publisher worried he might disclose “trade secrets and confidential information”.
An emotionally-charged and very public butting of antlers, then. The net result? Mirror’s Edge 2 seems a little less likely this morning.