alt Hacker NewsEA is shutting down BioWare
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One of the notable ways BioWare pushed the industry forward was the ability for the player to initiate a romance storyline with any one of a variety of in game characters. That often included the option of romancing characters of the same gender. I point this out because the Saudi Investment Fund bought EA a couple months back and they obviously have very strong opinions on those sorts of relationships. Are these two connect? I don't know, there are plenty of other potential reasons to close a studio, so probably not. But these are now the sort of questions we have to ask ourselves anytime EA makes a decision like this.
I am still extremely bitter about how BioWare, in my opinion, ruined the dragon age franchise. While not "truly" turn based, dragon age origins and dragon age 2 had the spirit of it, and felt like a party-based tactical RPG. Then out of nowhere, the studio decided to abandon that with inquisition and turn it into an action/adventure style of game. I had never really been so bitterly disappointed with a game release.
After that I knew they were done. ME3 was the last good game they released, imo.
It's not like no one saw this coming. Here's a comic from nine years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7cxz4a/eas_graveyar...
As always, the Onion nailed it perfectly long ago:
https://theonion.com/anthem-developers-assure-players-whiteb...
https://theonion.com/people-criticizing-anthem-don-t-underst...
"Stop complaining and attacking studios just because a game isn’t everything you want. Developers put too much stock in making games enjoyable and playable as it is. Planning to make something as profitable as Anthem was supposed to be and is a huge undertaking, so at least give them credit for trying. BioWare had 18 months to build a game that would sell millions of copies based on the goodwill they built up, and they hit it out of the park. You may not understand Q4 projections, but they do. Anthem is a game that exists and is funding CEO bonuses, and by that measure, it’s been a huge success."
Talent in western game studios just can't shake the startup mode. Try get a hit, try to get bought, cash out, run away.
Blizzard seemed to defy the stereotype but it died a long time ago, it's just a husk.
The contrast with japanese game studios is impressive.
The makers of Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins.
Sad, even though BioWare was dead already.
I gasped at the news but in retrospect, I'm not surprised... but as a huge Dragon Age fan, I had a bit of hope of a new Dragon Age game. This is a sad day.
The EA I remember was Racing Destruction Set, Pinball Construction Set, great stuff, lots of freeform playtime. Did they continue releasing that kind of stuff? Yeah I haven't kept up.
It's the new hot business model. Buy a very successful studio then liquidate it.
May all of those developers go off to create their own IP and, in turn, get acquired by EA.
It's like the cluttered overgrown forest that periodicly burns down to create space for new life.
EA is like a landowner who does no maintenance but loves to buy things that have been maintained because they look so good.
One of my favorite game companies ever. But it had already been "shut down" in practice after the acquisition.
> The company is also laying off around 400 staffers, Bloomberg reports, including around 50 at BioWare. The changes follow EA being taken private by an investor group led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners in a $55 billion deal that closed in August.
Never thought that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund would shutdown the company that created so many childhood memories.
Bioware has been dead for over a decade. What we have now has just been wearing its name. Honestly best to just let it go.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
I think that a lot of Bioware fans just had nostalgia though - their recent work doesn't seem to have been as well received as their franchise initiator games.
Really loved Jade Empire and Mass Effect. But they had lost their touch quite some time ago. Not surprised this was coming
People kind of predicted this, didn't they?
I guess in a way it was unavoidable. Still sad though.
I miss many great companies of the 1990s.
You mean Saudi Arabia is shutting down Bioware?
Their last really good game was Dragon Age: Origins. It is nice that they put the studio out of its misery.
Knights of the Old Republic will forever be one of my favorite games
RIP to an amazing creative group
Many great memories of KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect. RIP
One of the few corps I applied for a job at that did not even reply. Also known for being a bit of a crappy employer as well even long before EA bought them. Many other studios was also out of line back then to be fair.
good day for gamers, bioware has been dead for a decade so it can finally rest in peace.
They wrote on the flipboard: If GTA6 online next month... We'd better shut down the company
End of an era, but the writing has been on the wall for a while now.
Bioware hasn't released a good game in over a decade, and Anthem was a low point for the entire game industry imo
I'm honestly surprised they lasted this long. Sad to see them go but only because they should have been way better
The studio behind masterpieces like Dragon Age Veilguard and Mass Effect Andromeda? Sad day
This comes not long after Sony basically killed Bungie. Destiny 2 is "done", and Marathon has an extremely low player count and is in the process of dying.
Another victim of EA. Bought, ruined, buried.
[dead]
[dead]
BioWare shutting down is sad, but it’s really a classic ship of theseus situation.
There are a handful of notables still there but the majority of the teams that made the classic Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR, and Mass Effect disappeared a long time ago through natural turnover and a couple of brutal rounds of layoffs.
The silver lining is that the talent didn't vanish and we have teams like Archetype working on Exodus, Stoic with The Banner Saga, or offshoots like Yellow Brick and Beamdog.