Torchlight 2 is an example of dev studio bought and it helped release a game most will agree it fits the (small) series and is better.
Blizzard had all the money to polish to death D3, but is that some key people left is because of the dev studio bought? It's not that clear.
Origin Systems is an example often quoted as a studio killed by its bought, but when you look in detail it's far to be that clear. For Ultima series, Ultima VII part 2 has been released after EA bought. Ok let say it's been a dynamic out of EA context. But games as Crusader: No Remorse or No Regret was done long after EA bought. Wing Commander III was done after EA bought.
It feels like before EA bought the studios was in the rise and after in decline. But the details don't confirm it. Looks more like a normal studio dev life cycle, at some point their fail to adapt to evolution of the market, their passion decline, their creativity starts decline. For me Origin get killed by its inability to design games with good controls, they was trying to be inventive on that matter but was mainly tedious to awful.
Larian would be stupid to accept any deal before the phenomenal success of DoS has finished show all its scale. Even then if the success is confirmed and the passion is still here, I doubt big money will make them not try their chance one more time. And if the passion isn't here much then I doubt any DoS follow-up will be this good.
