Facing financial pressure, the video-game publisher chose ‘Star Wars’ over ‘Mass Effect’
Schreier adds on Bluesky:
Why did EA shut down BioWare? Twitter thinks the studio failed because it was too woke. BlueSky thinks Saudi Arabia killed the studio for being too gay. The real reason? Star Wars
Connections that work at Bioware Montreal confirmed the issue was with trans content in Mass Effect.
This sounds like the studios “official” excuse.
I Don’t buy it.
They confirmed that trans content got pushback, not that it was the reason the studio was shut down.
Official company statements are what they want the public to hear and are often not the whole truth. In this case, I’d bet its not the truth at all.
Why the fuck would they not produce both?
Because they’re so strapped for cash in servicing the debt for the leveraged buyout that they’re looking for more predictable successes, as outlined in the article.
Also, to be clear, this isn’t an official statement from them. It’s from Schreier’s sources. EA wouldn’t say this officially as they have not officially acknowledged Battlefront 3.
The industry is in crisis from multiple angles. AI speculation is hoovering up their investment capital. Development costs are through the roof as games get more complicated and require more specialized labor. And despite some companies still spending those hundreds of millions in costs, they’re finding that rarely correlates to hundreds of millions+ of revenue.
There isn’t the risk tolerance to just let dev teams do whatever anymore. And Bioware’s “whatever” has been three? flops in a row.