EA is shutting down BioWare

glimshe

One of my favorite game companies ever. But it had already been "shut down" in practice after the acquisition.

ndesaulniers

Many great memories of KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect. RIP

r0ckarong

Another victim of EA. Bought, ruined, buried.

2OEH8eoCRo0

The studio behind masterpieces like Dragon Age Veilguard and Mass Effect Andromeda? Sad day

barbazoo

> 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.

bluefirebrand

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

everdrive

It's the new hot business model. Buy a very successful studio then liquidate it.

WithinReason

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.

seattle_spring

End of an era, but the writing has been on the wall for a while now.

kobalsky

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.

Mr_Eri_Atlov

Knights of the Old Republic will forever be one of my favorite games RIP to an amazing creative group

walrus01

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.

koziserek

They wrote on the flipboard: If GTA6 online next month... We'd better shut down the company

JohnMakin

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.

humanlion87

Really loved Jade Empire and Mass Effect. But they had lost their touch quite some time ago. Not surprised this was coming

AdmiralAsshat

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...

science4sail

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.

ReptileMan

Their last really good game was Dragon Age: Origins. It is nice that they put the studio out of its misery.

aresant

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.

Night_Thastus

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.