Mass Effect will not continue.
Pretty interesting that both Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka (the two remaining co-founders by the time of the EA acquisition) both bailed at the same time in 2012. After quite a number of lead developers and writers jumped ship.
So, it took 5 years of trying to tough it out under corporate ownership before they were like ‘this is bullshit, let’s go’.
And BioWare, who made so many great titles, didn’t produce anything particularly noteworthy after that.
It’s E.A.!
EA making sure I boycott them by cancelling any games I am interested in and enshitifying the rest (Looking at you Skate 4 and the upcoming Fight Night game)
Another studio joins the EA graveyard. EA is such an awful company. Bioware made Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, and Jade Empire. What a great studio it was. RIP o7
Honestly, this is one where I can’t put all of the blame on EA. Bioware has been in a decline since My Face Is Tired, and a complete freefall since Anthem. Veilguard was their last chance and they blew it. The Bioware we’re nostallgic for (Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR, DA:O) hasn’t existed for years, and “Bioware magic” turned out to be a fart in the wind.
(edit) And let’s be real, Anthem wasn’t EA’s doing. Most of the game’s failures were Bioware’s fault, mostly incompetent management. https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964
It’s because most of the people who made those games probably left. Companies don’t make games, people do.
Even the people who don’t leave, after having some success, may end up getting promoted. Once promoted their talents may not be suited to management or the promotion might go to their head and they’ll be undone by their own hubris.
It’s a minor miracle that any group of people manage to make more than one banger game in a row.
I think my issue is more how the IPs go to the graveyard not so much the companies. As you said the company hadn’t been doing great. But it always seems like publishers just hoard ideas only to do nothing useful with them.
EA bought BioWare in 2007. Sometimes enshittification has a long tail.
Yup, it used to be great. Another great will rise, the cycle shall continue.
And when did ea acquire bioware?
Ngl, anthem was a lot of fun mechanically. Great Iron Man sim
Aw shit I forgot about Jade Empire. Fuckkk EA.
some of my favorite games ever made. what a travesty.
When I was in college there was a girl I knew who ranted and complained when BioWare was bought by EA. She was right.
That was my first exposure to understanding what EA is.
Bioware was dead shortly after EA bought them.
it’s dead as soon as leadership starts targeting acquisition. internal priorities change and it’s not on a quality product, it’s on pumping the numbers to look favourably regardless of truthfulness
or maybe I’m just bitter because I see this happening at my own workplace. we just launched a new website, and pretty much every claim about our culture and process and priorities is a lie. it used to be true. it hasn’t been in a couple years, and it sure as fuck isn’t right now.
before, actually. as soon as bioware execs started sniffing the asses of potential buyers. it wouldn’t have mattered which of the game giants sucked up the pieces, the outcome would have been the same. the corpo-culture would chase the talent away and the studio would fade away.
A lot of us predicted this would happen after Veilguard not meeting expectations. EA would eventually make BioWare take the fall for EA’s bad management choices.
Honestly, the surprise was that it took them this long to do it.
Let’s be real, this isn’t on EA. The Bioware that made great games hasn’t existed for a decade. EA gave Bioware enough time to get its act together and they never could. Any studio with a decade of failures would be shut down.
I’m not willing to let EA off the hook. ME: Andromeda had good ideas in it. If EA hadn’t forced them to use the DICE engine, they could have spent more time on shipping and polishing features and likely would have had a much stronger launch.
And that’s about the only game you can pin on EA (which BTW isn’t even the first Bioware game on the frostbite engine, inquisition was also on frostbite so the engine wasn’t completely unfamiliar to them). Anthem got 9 years and the only interesting feature Anthem had was kept only because the EA representative told them to. Veilguard got 6 years after being rebooted. Both games got more than enough time to cook in the oven, one of them came out like a hot snake and the other isn’t a turd only if we’re being generous.
Canadian studio based out of my home town of Edmonton. Fuck you, EA.
Worth remembering that most of that list predates EA. Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire and the first Mass Effect were all made before EA bought BioWare in the 2007 deal that also brought in Pandemic, which EA shut down about two years later. The EA years are mostly the later Dragon Age and Mass Effect games, Anthem and Veilguard.
This one hits close to home. Bioware games were a big part of my youth. I can’t remember how often I replayed bg2, but I still remember the joy when I actually properly beat it for the first time. I’ll never forget the thrill when I explored the dwarven tunnels in Dragon Age or the magic of Mass Effect’s masterful world building. It seriously feels like I just lost a friend.
Fuck EA.
I’ve enjoyed a lot of their games, but KOTOR has a very special place in my heart.
