Another one bites the dust. In tragic  news for California, the state just lost another big-name business.  EA’S Pandemic Studios was a beloved maker of video games, and will  cease to function, at least physically, in California. In an interview  with Kotaku, the studio’s CEO, John Riccitiello, blamed  the loss of the studio on ridiculous levels of taxation and the high  price of living in the state, and explained that as a  businessman, working in California simply no longer made sense.

“For  good or for bad, we are taking down headcount in California because  it is really expensive,” Kotaku said.

According to Kotaku, in the interview Riccititello  cited “recent regulatory changes” and the lack of tax incentives  in the state, and further claimed that it costs “two to three times  more to employ developers in that state [California] than it does in  Montreal, the U.K., Eastern Europe or China.” Unfortunately for about  200 employees of Pandemic, the perhaps business savvy move translates  to lost jobs.

Tragic, but realistic: there is only  so much money state lawmakers can squeeze out of businesses and the  wealthy, before businesses and wealthy individuals simply pack up. Some  individuals and businesses will retain their business in California  for sentimental reasons, but after a certain amount of abuse, even they  will exit the Golden State in order to find true opportunity. What happened  to the idea of California as a state of innovation, creativity and a place to buck the status quo? Raising taxes on businesses has been done before,  and done badly, on the East Coast.

Unless lawmakers hope to continue to  scare away business interests, they need to seriously consider the fact  that smart businesspeople will not spend extra overheard forever. Pandemic  Studios is just one entertainment provider, but it is representative  of a growing problem: California is known as the movie capital of the  world, but why would filmmakers continue to throw money away to film  here, when it is significantly cheaper to film elsewhere?

Officials  in other states recognize that the market is opening. For example, in  Arizona, the Arizona  Department of Commerce offers a number of benefits and tax breaks to those who come to film  in the state. These include a Transaction Privilege Tax Exemption and  an income tax credit. In Oregon, the Governor’s  Office of Film & Television offers cash rebates in the form of rebates on 20% of “Oregon-based  goods and services” used, in addition to a “cash payment of up to  16.2% of wages paid to production personnel.” The office also points  out that there is no sales tax in Oregon. Compare that to prohibitively  high filming prices and an increasing sales tax in California, and it  becomes easier to see why some businesses would rather close and/or  relocate outside of California, than to stay in this beautiful state  and hemorrhage cash.