How a Drunken Email Led to Molyneux's Parting With EA

"It started a whole chain of events off, which were kind of impossible to stop."

By Alex Osborn

Before founding Lionhead Studios, Peter Molyneux was the head of Populous developer Bullfrog Productions, a studio he co-founded with Les Edgar. The studio was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1995, and two years later, Molyneux left the company because of a drunken email he sent to EA announcing his resignation.

Molyneux shared the "real story" behind his departure on the latest episode our interview show IGN Unfiltered. While mulling over whether or not he should resign from Bullfrog, he invited his friend (and soon to be Lionhead co-founder) Tim Rance over.

After they got "very drunk," Molyneux said Rance suggested he leave the company, which prompted Molyneux to draft up an email to EA CEO Larry Probst that roughly said, "Dear Larry, thank you very much. This is my... I'm handing my note in officially. Thank you, Peter." While he didn't intend to actually send it, to Molyneux's "horror," Rance hit the send button.

"Of course, I never would have done it. It was the absolutely worst possible way to hand your notice in," Molyneux explained, noting "it started a whole chain of events off, which were kind of impossible to stop. Straight away they got—as you would, and as Microsoft did as well—they got very paranoid about me leaving and taking everybody with me.... It was too late."

As a result, Molyneux said he was told "very quickly, 'we don't want you to come into the office anymore.'" While he said he could "completely understand" EA's response, it was still very difficult for him and felt like "ousting me from my family." He was also told EA was shutting down the studio's current project, Dungeon Keeper, to which Molyneux said, "there's no way... I would rather finish Dungeon Keeper under my own steam." As such, most of the game was actually written at Molyneux's house.

When asked if he would take back that email if he could, without hesitation, he replied, "yeah, absolutely. It was such a silly thing to do. It was just so unprofessional."

For more on Peter Molyneux's early days as a game developer, stay tuned for the first part of this month's episode of IGN Unfiltered, which goes live tomorrow.

Alex Osborn is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter and subscribe to his YouTube channel.

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