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
this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2026
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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.
EA bought BioWare in 2007. Sometimes enshittification has a long tail.
Yep. They bought Bioware after Mass Effect. Dragon Age Origins was already late in development, so that was essentially unaffected.
It's the games that followed where the writing was on the wall. Mass Effect 2 was mostly fine, but it was one of the first games to introduce the model of "Buy new for the complete experience, pay extra if you buy used."
Dragon Age 2 tried to be more action-y by deviating from what people liked about the first one. It was just fine in retrospect, but I don't think it was what anyone was looking for.
Mass Effect 3 had one of the most egregious examples of on-disc DLC, coupled with its very controversial ending that was honestly never really fixed, but just carried by the rest of the game. It was also one of the games of that era to jump on the obligatory "shoehorned multiplayer mode" bandwagon.
Dragon Age Inquisition at least won awards, but I think it was boosted by being an early next-gen title in an otherwise slow year, not having to compete with GTA5 the year prior or The Witcher 3 the year after. I just remember a lot of the "singleplayer MMO" discourse when it came out, and I don't think it managed to top ME3's numbers.
Every game that follows can speak for itself.
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Ngl, anthem was a lot of fun mechanically. Great Iron Man sim
You and my husband. Now I know two people who liked that game.
Well me and my brother also liked it, so it's 4.
Mechanically, the game was amazing. It just fell short of content. If they had just added more, the game could've been a great looter shooter.
The controls were so smooth, combat was amazing in that game. Someone needed to tell Bioware to focus on that instead of wasting a ton of dev time working on all the segments where you're just a human walking around. It should've been all mech all the time.
Yup, it used to be great. Another great will rise, the cycle shall continue.
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.
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some of my favorite games ever made. what a travesty.
Aw shit I forgot about Jade Empire. Fuckkk EA.
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To the surprise of nobody. Who thought Saudi's and Kushner bought EA because they you to 'ship a same sex NPC.
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.
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.
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.
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Damn, sad to see people lose their jobs, but the Mass Effect cancellation is just an extra kick in the ass.
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.
Staying was probably in their contract. Its pretty common when a company is bought out that selling ownership stay for X amount of years after so the company doesn't just instantly nose dive.
Yup, and there's a little quid pro quo, too: You have to stay but they make you president in the corporate structure over the acquisition and probably get stock offerings. Kind of expected, but I'm sure it's nice to be able to say you're a senior VP or whatever in a much bigger company.
They were just counting down the days for when their contracts were up.
Kind of a shame but also understandable. You put your life, blood sweat and tears, all the overtime, every waking moment, to build something and if the opportunity to cash out arrives they almost always take it. Otherwise they're just riding the wolf by the ears until they crash from burnout.
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.
Dragon Age's inception was long before EA too. I remember them talking about it in the Neverwinter Nights community forums.
Back then very little was known beyond the title, the fact it would be an original IP and that the "Dragon Age" title would be about a literal calendar "age of the Dragon" rather than indicating the presence of actual dragons.
Hard to say how much of it was conceived then, but they were probably already writing stuff.
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Weird, given that there's also a Mass Effect TV show in the works. Unless that got axed in the last couple months
Probably just sold the rights to another company.
If it's anything like the Halo TV show, expect some low budget slop with a 10:1 marketing:production budget.
I’m still mad about that abomination of a show.
Oh, I can see it now. The plot is clear!
In this timeline, the Geth are actually cyborgs who look like humans. They are attacking Eden Prime at the behest of their mysterious master. Saren is the first human spectre and helps Commander Shepard escape from Eden Prime before the planet is exploded by Sovereign.
Saren and Shepard then go to New York to contact the Council, reporting a strange intelligence supporting the Geth. But then, the duo is attacked by a Geth ambush team! After managing to defeat the Geth fleet in orbit, Saren boards Sovereign and makes it say who the mastermind is, but gets brainwashed!
After this, Shepard chases Saren through a series of mass relays, eventually reaching Ilos. That is where Saren reveals the awful truth - the enemy turned out to be a Prothean VI hidden deep underground. The VI, named Vigil, commands Sovereign, and seeks to destroy the entire galaxy if not stopped! In a moment of lucidity, Saren pilots Sovereign into Ilos, destroying the planet and Vigil for good!
The final scene shows Shepard, distraught over the loss of his friend, just before the Council sends him an email that he is the new human spectre, in Saren's honor!
I hate how plausible this is.
I can imagine shill comments about the show as well.
"Haters are whining about this show over nothing. Shepard becomes a spectre, Saren dies at the end, Sovereign goes boom. What more do you people want?"
"The retelling of Virmire is way better than the OG. It turns out that Liara only needed to mind meld with one of the workers in the facility, and compel that worker to initiate the self-destruct sequence. Like, duh. Is Game Shepard just stupid?"
"People keep complaining that the Citadel is only seen at the end. New York is actually within budget. I liked the Empire State Building scene with TIM tbh."
"TIM is at his best in this show. His sword is so cool!"
"Reimagining the Geth as the Borg was a master-class move. Geth-Jenkins was the best! Maybe he'll come back as Legion in the next season?"
"People keep complaining that the Citadel is only seen at the end. New York is actually within budget. I liked the Empire State Building scene with TIM tbh."
"Plus they go to Vancouver and London in the third game, what makes the time spent in New York any different?"
"Reimagining the Geth as the Borg was a master-class move. Geth-Jenkins was the best! Maybe he'll come back as Legion in the next season?"
"If they just had the robot faces, you couldn't see the actors properly emote. This is much better for the format of TV, the performances can shine and deliver the emotional nuance of the Geth."
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I've enjoyed a lot of their games, but KOTOR has a very special place in my heart.
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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.
It seriously feels like I just lost a friend.
Your friend was bought by EA and all his innard replaced by bunch of cockroaches, just like the dude in Men in Black (1997). If we take corporate personhood seriously, the fucker that died is not the same person who worked on BG2.
I remember falling in love with Kotor and Jade Empire on my original Xbox.
Was super disappointed we didn’t get sequels on the Xbox 360. The first Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins made up for it though. Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 2 were a let down. More action then RPG.
I have so many memories about the hype for Dragon Age: Origins. Reading about it in high school, drooling over screenshots. All via Games for Windows magazine. I was probably the only person subscribed to it lol.
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)
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I feel like they need to drop the 'Arts' from their name.
Or prepend it with an F
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