Bring out your dead. Electronic Arts, after going private this summer due to a leveraged buy-out by Saudi Arabia and several other investors, has taken its first ‘restructuring’ victims—most notable of all being BioWare. BioWare, best known for Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, has been well-respected throughout its 30 year tenure in the gaming industry. As EA rolls BioWare’s still-warm corpse into the pit filled with all the other studios who have died at their hands, they’re also busy laying off 3% of their global workforce, which equates to about 400 staffers. Given the fact that EA made $7.53 billion dollars last year, it makes sense that they would have such a tight budget.
BioWare has been dying a series of agonizingly slow deaths by way of down-sizing since the release of the critically panned Mass Effect: Andromeda in 2017, resulting in the shutdown of BioWare’s Montreal studio. BioWare took an enormous hit with 2019’s Anthem, their online-multiplayer action RPG shooter, that had its servers shut down just this January. The hope was Anthem could compete with similar titles like Bungie’s Destiny. Given its tortured development cycle, it’s no surprise that it ended up being a commercial failure. Shortly after in 2020, work began on the next Mass Effect game which quickly went on ice as work began on Dragon Age 4.
EA had other plans, demanding for the game to operate within a live service model. Because sh*tloads of money is never enough, you have to have ALL of the money. The project that was once DA4 then split into two other projects, codenamed Joplin and Morrison, and eventually made it full circle back to Dragon Age. This horrendous money sink and development cycle would eventually produce the biggest commercial failure of the Dragon Age series, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which missed sales goals by 50%. Fanbase reaction to the game was polarizing, which didn’t help matters much, though it received relatively positive critical feedback overall.
Mass Effect has now been felled along with its parent studio, being definitively cancelled. No word yet on what that means for the Prime Video Mass Effect adaptation. EA will be doubling down on titles like Apex Legends and Battlefield, and of course funneling ever-increasing amounts of capital into its sports games. Marvel’s Iron Man also remains untouched. EA says they’re bringing acquired studios DICE and Respawn together to work on a project. They haven’t clarified, but speculation has it as Star Wars Battlefront 3.
BioWare has been lovingly creating games that capture our interest and imagination for thirty years, and it’s been terrible watching the studio’s decline, and more terrible still to see it finally crumble. Taking the world by storm in ’96 with Shattered Steel, it followed up with the legendary Baldur’s Gate in ’98, marking the beginning of the famous franchise. The original Mass Effect trilogy were some of the finest RPGs of its era, and still hold up today. Dragon Age: Origins remains one of the best fantasy RPGs of all time, and Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard all held up its legacy beautifully. Needless to say: f*ck Electronic Arts. They have singlehandedly done more damage to the gaming industry than any other single entity, impressive considering how fierce the competition is.
Rest in Peace, BioWare, and thank you for everything.