EA Is Shutting Down BioWare (qz.com) 46
"According to a recent report by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier (paywalled), EA has reportedly decided to shut down BioWare," the studio behind the Dragon Age and Mass Effect games, writes longtime Slashdot reader atari_kid. Quartz reports: Chief Studios Officer Cam Weber and Chief Operating Officer David Tinson wrote that "over the past several months, we've taken a hard look at our business." They said a small BioWare team had been doing early groundwork on a Mass Effect game, but EA chose to drop the effort. That decision means closing the studio and its Edmonton workspace, they wrote. "We do not take this decision lightly," Weber and Tinson said of the BioWare closure, according to Variety.
EA will keep investing in Apex Legends and is continuing work on two upcoming launches, Marvel's Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game, the executives said. They added that EA's Respawn and DICE studios will join forces on an upcoming project, in addition to new Battlefield titles. Bloomberg said the project is probably a new installment of the Star Wars: Battlefront franchise.
EA will keep investing in Apex Legends and is continuing work on two upcoming launches, Marvel's Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game, the executives said. They added that EA's Respawn and DICE studios will join forces on an upcoming project, in addition to new Battlefield titles. Bloomberg said the project is probably a new installment of the Star Wars: Battlefront franchise.
It's a shame (Score:2)
I imagine these surviving projects will not do well and more studios will eventually close. They will slowly become a sports-only game studio/publisher.
Cheers, Here's to the good years. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
"Infocom presents... The Crescent Hawks Revenge" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC1dufHFkG8) - that one's westwood.
RE Bioware specifically, i was a big fan of the KOTOR games and Mass Effect...(though i still haven't played ME3 but some day i will!)
Gaming is a tough industry
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
(https://xkcd.com/566/)
Re: (Score:2)
KOTOR was a great game. Then EA bought them and they released Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. Three of the best RPGs ever to my mind.
Re: (Score:3)
Origins was their peak.
But these are my opinions, you've got your own.
Fucking Kushner (Score:5, Informative)
n/t
Statistics (Score:4, Interesting)
20% of companies which are acquired under a leveraged buyout go bankrupt within 10 years compared to companies which don't. Goodbye EA.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
20% of companies which are acquired under a leveraged buyout go bankrupt within 10 years compared to companies which don't. Goodbye EA.
EA going bust... and nothing of value will be lost.
Some good will come of it, a large player going bust and all their servers getting turned off will finally force governments (well I mean the EU and possibly Australia and Canada will join in) to address the issue with ownership of games. No one will want to acquire EA as it'll have a load of potentially toxic debt in the form of refunds, class actions, et al. from games that are no longer playable.
Re: (Score:2)
you're a fool if you think EA is going anywhere. The Saudi firm that bought them has more money than they know what to do with.
EA's "subsidiaries" are glorified brands now, Employees work in Redwood City, Austin, Orlando, or Kitchener ON.
Frankly, this is what should've happened 20 years ago, but EA was worried that people would be mad that their (now-sullied) trusted company brandings were being swallowed into the Tetsuo Shima-like morass.
Now, everyone knows game quality is no longer tied to formerly-truste
Re: (Score:2)
The Saudi firm that bought them has more money than they know what to do with.
Yes, all companies who use leveraged buyouts to acquire another do. And then they run them into the ground making bank from interest all the way home. It helps to understand the play here.
Frankly, this is what should've happened 20 years ago
No, leveraged buyouts of game studios should never happen ever.
Sorry but not (Score:3)
Hate to see Bioware go...but when Mass Effect 3 came out in 2012, and surely 90% of the employees have moved on, how much institutional knowledge is there to make the next game in the series? (Sorry Andromeda)
Re: (Score:2)
The success of DA:O killed BioWare. EA basically mandated DA:2 to come out in a year; they had aspirations of a yearly RPG series. This, obviously, did not go well internally, and most of the studio ended up leaving due to the crunch and overwork. It was all downhill from there.
Re: Sorry but not (Score:2)
But that's not success' fault
Re: (Score:3)
Hate to see Bioware go...but when Mass Effect 3 came out in 2012, and surely 90% of the employees have moved on, how much institutional knowledge is there to make the next game in the series? (Sorry Andromeda)
Did you not play Mass Effect Andromeda?
It was a case study in how a game designed by committee is terribad.
Lets make a game that is as inoffensive as possible but also try to make it cool and edgy. Make a bad guy that looks like an overgrown infant and use all the same tropes from the previous game yet pretend it hasn't been done before. Also make the gameplay as fun as gouging your eyes out with a rusty fork but above all else we must not, never, ever, ever, ever, upset the most fragile minority of a
EA sucks... (Score:4, Insightful)
EA sucks and I will cheer when they go down in flames. Everything they touch they leverage into shit.
Re: (Score:3)
The good news is that them focusing on their guns-and-balls big hitters (Sports FC/FIFA, Madden NFL, and Battlefield) means they probably won't buy any more studios to destroy (not to mention they have less financial dry powder for that anyway now that they have a massive LBO debt load to service).
Re: (Score:2)
you are probably correct, but luckily I don't play sports games and I gave up on battlefield after 1942...
Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would EA actually invest in anything good when they can keep shoveling generic shit?
Re: (Score:1)
EA has no money to invest. Thanks to a leveraged buyout all they have is a huge debt to serve. They will keep doing this by milking what they have while rapidly selling off or cost cutting their way to bankruptcy.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, I wasn't solely referring to monetary investment, but yeah.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh I know what you mean. My point was EA was bad before, but the style of buyout of EA basically precludes any idea of innovation in the future. Previously it was just management direction driving it, now it's investor demands and debt fulfilment requirements.
Schwizacked (Score:1)
well it's not like they were going to shut down their Fuck It All Up division, now, was it? Core of the company since the early aughts, if not earlier.
Re: (Score:3)
Bioware bolted on a romance package to Baldur's Gate 2, even though they had a backlog of bugs (and the romances added more bugs). Then they started adding romances to all of their games.
Dear Bioware,
You suck at writing romances. All of your games are worse off because you added romances. Stay in your RPG lane. Other developers make one handed games far better than you.
Didn't play Baldur's , but in ME it was moderately cringe, and in ME2 (iirc) they kinda went overboard... I particularly didn't care for the fact that just being friendly in half the cases was "the romance path". i.e. that just showing interest in someone was deemed sexual interest. Though i guess that kind of misunderstanding happens IRL too so it's not entirely unrealistic.
Re: Romance Garbage (Score:2)
Basic Midwestern politiness in these poorly done dating sim esque DLCs was interpreted as a sexual overture.
Re: (Score:2)
But yeah, and now it seems like there has to be romance in every party RPG, so you have a normal conversation (with no signposting) and all of a sudden it's all gay flirting with Gale. I did not like that about BG3.
What's in EA's portfolio now? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
KOTOR 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 are very good.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok but neither of those were developed by BioWare.
Its a bit odd if you're recommending them since one is 22 years old and the other is 3 years old. Pretty sure he's heard of those games already if he hasn't already played them.
Sadly not surprising (Score:2)
Mismanagement has been the name of the game since Mass Effect 2. It's just been design by committee junk.
The game development business is tough (Score:1)
Modern audience did not show up? (Score:3)
BioWare been talking so much about that modern audience they were making games for, so that means they didnt show up and nobody bought their hundreds of millions of dollars failures, huh?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
That's for sure. And that sums up the fate of their major franchises.
I was once a big fan, but at this point, I'm not even sorry to see them go.
Re: Modern audience did not show up? (Score:2)
I think it is far more nefarious. They were already on their way out, the OG devs were gone, they had game flops, so accessing cheap woke-cash helped them stay afloat a little while longer but it brought those activists without any experience or talent but they were cheap so that is nice, but you just gotta let them be loud.
The corpo fatcats got to prepare their golden parachutes and nest eggs a few more years longer, and the narcissist is could be loud online thinking the fatcats support them.
Nobody cared
Good. (Score:2)
At the end of the day, it's people. (Score:2)
Bioware may well be a shadow of its former self, but at the end of the day, love or hate what they produced in their latter days, it's all people that worked every day to do their best to bring about what management and the employed script writers specified.
There are many posts about graphics being superb, but gameplay lacking. That's a decision by game designers, rather than all the team, many of who are lumbered with knowing it could be better but constrained to produce what the spec and story said.
I fee