r/bioware • u/Bitter_Let4911 • 7h ago
Discussion EA Has Officially Been Sold, And Jared Kushner is involved in the purchase
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-has-officially-been-sold-and-what-comes-next-could-be-painful/In case you needed a reminder who to blame today!
EDIT: It's not who you think
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u/Any-Butterscotch5259 3h ago
I'm familiar with buyouts and those usually lead to cleaning the house. I've experienced it and known people who were victims of it.
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u/No-Candle-4443 2h ago
Yep, once any company is picked up by private equity, the writing is pretty much on the wall
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u/scoop813 6h ago
Bioware was dead long before this sale
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u/NonSupportiveCup 7h ago
Kushner deserves a lot of scrutiny. But this ain't it.
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u/Bitter_Let4911 7h ago
You didn't read the article then
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u/NonSupportiveCup 7h ago
At the end of the day. It's just a videogame company. Kushner should be scrutinized for his roll in all the shady shit that doesnt really have anything to do with this.
Entertainment is a drop in the bucket compared to profiting off murder, war, and destruction.
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u/Helpful-Way-8543 7h ago
The Matrix pivot any kind of accountability can be had... nope, it's no fault of BioWare... checks notes.. oh wait, we've got someone else and not just EA this time; yup, Jared Kushner is who is to blame!
I agree with ya that Kushner isn't great, like at all, but come on, can some of this fanbase stop infantilizing BioWare, especially now or nah? BioWare's games haven't been selling all that great, right? Hm... I wonder why... maybe that was the problem? And maybe they've already waited since Andromeda, which is like 10 years? Kushner got handed a list of graphs and told "this studio has been underperforming" and that's why.
Yes, of course I'm against Kushner and the overall things that he's been involved with, but come on, lol, now we're blaming Kushner for a mid studio that has been been underperforming? That Matrix pivot is insane.
Excuses on excuses
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u/Bitter_Let4911 7h ago
I guess you didn't read the article
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u/Lycanthoth 4h ago
Dude, an article isn't needed. It's common sense. Bioware is a big and expensive studio, and every game they've put out in the past 15ish years has either bombed or underperformed. Their last game that sold well was Inquisition alllll the way back in 2012.
Bioware just wasn't financially viable.
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u/code4lyf 2h ago
And quite frankly, having ME5 be announced in 2020 and still be in early development 6 years later smells of massive mismanagment.
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u/Bitter_Let4911 2h ago
Did you preorder GTA6?
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u/Lycanthoth 36m ago
Difference being that Rockstar actually has a track record of delivering good games even if they take a long time.
Meanwhile, post-Inquisition Bioware consistently takes years just to figure out a vague direction for a game, then delivers products like Anthem.
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u/code4lyf 2h ago
No, I dont preorder. I wait to see if its actually good and wait for the buggy release to be patched.
Rockstar was not in a rush to release GTA6 becuase they were making tons of money from GTA5 online. Bioware was not the same.
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u/Bitter_Let4911 2h ago
EA executives told BioWare to turn Veilguard into an online live-service game. Part of that delay was EA reassigning staff and finishing Veilguard first
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u/code4lyf 1h ago
Maybe so but mismanagement is mismanagment and the bioware execs failed to push back. Once these changes and reorgs start, the employees see the writing on the wall. At that point you know you are just collecting a paycheck until the clock runs out.
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u/imperial_scum 5h ago
I'm surprised it took so long to be honest. Between whatever Anthem was and the eternity it took to make DAV which performed as predicted.
Bethesda is next if they keep fucking around with eternal development cycles and goofy games no one asked for
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u/Bitter_Let4911 3h ago
I guess if there's a silver lining it's that EA hasn't driven any franchise into the ground with microtransactions and featureless updates that cost 70 dollars every single year over the course of a decade while maintaining the legal monopoly on the property so literally no one else can ever make a game to compete with it
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u/senn42000 7h ago
BioWare and EA are to blame, full stop. BioWare's writing team and EA forcing live service systems are what killed it. If Dragon Age Veilguard was both a critical and financial success than they would not have been in this position to get sold off to a Saudi group.
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u/Awful_At_Math 4h ago
Lol, no way. Dragon Age money is peanuts next to what EA makes from Gun and Ball players.
Veilguard might have been the final nail in BioWare's coffin but that sale would've happened regardless of how much Dragon Age sold.
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u/Bitter_Let4911 7h ago edited 4h ago
Interesting
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u/dimiteddy 4h ago
Dragon Age failure had nothing to do with sell out to Saudi government fund. Dragon Age and Bioware division is only a pretty small fraction of EA. Saudis paid so much money for EA FC Sport (FKA FIFA), Madden, Battlefield, NFS and Sims.
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u/TheoryOfRelativity12 36m ago
Well... if it's going to Saudi there won't be woke shit so sounds like a win.
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u/HellerDamon 23m ago
EA sports didn't close.
EA sports is a monetary success.
Bioware has been burning money.
Saudi Arabia likes money.
The blame is not in the buyout, it's on Bioware for doing bad products. You can't even put it on politics. Had they made a success like BG3 they wouldn't be closing.
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u/Bitter_Let4911 19m ago
EA also contributed to the record you're blaming BioWare for. EA pushed Veilguard toward live service before it reversed, and the studio had been shrinking for years. Making BioWare solely responsible for its results ignores that.
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u/dayto_aus 7h ago
Right, blame a random politician instead of the sales figures lol.
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u/Bitter_Let4911 7h ago
Kushner is not a politician, but a businessman who has acted in unconfirmed or special envoy capacities for foreign policy negotiations.
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u/dayto_aus 7h ago
"A politician is a person who holds, seeks, or is actively involved in a government office or party politics. They help make laws, shape public policy, and represent the interests of citizens at local, state, or national levels".
He has actively participated in government affairs, helped shape public policy, and represented the interests of the U.S. government. He doesn't need to have held an office to be a politician. Nitpicking definitions is a weird way to avoid the topic.
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u/Bitter_Let4911 7h ago
Kushner's company only owns 1% of EA. I am not avoiding the topic. He isn't the topic.
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u/Far_Composer_2024 6h ago
EA are the main issue in my opinion
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u/Pyrlor 5h ago
Then your opinion is wrong
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u/Jan667 5h ago
Bioware was tanking under EA leadership for years. They were actively hindering and making it even wrose. Not to mention the Bioware people that mattered already left studio years ago, guess the reasons.
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u/Grand-Depression 2h ago
Bioware was left to do what they wanted. EA didn't step in to give direction. The only report we have was for Anthem when Bioware removed flight and EA told them to keep flight in as it was the only mechanic that seemed interesting. Bioware owns their own failures.
I do, however, think EA closing Bioware as they were developing the next ME sequel is ridiculously short-sighted.
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u/Bitter_Let4911 2h ago
Bloomberg reported that EA executives told BioWare to turn Veilguard into an online live-service game, and the studio later reversed course back to single-player. That's a documented case of EA direction hurting a BioWare project, in addition to the Anthem flight story.
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u/Far_Composer_2024 5h ago
Thats fine im still sticking with MY opinion though bruv so get used to it
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u/Grand-Depression 2h ago
We have first hand accounts that Bioware was left to do as they pleased, though. So while it IS your opinion, it is objectively wrong based on all the sources we have.
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6h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MorgrimTheReclaimer 5h ago
Imagine hating queer people this much
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u/Beginning_Stay_9263 5h ago
Imagine the cries from your people if they had injected a bunch of Christian messaging into their games.
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u/cosmoboy 5h ago
Haha, it's not like one is the opposite of the other. The difference here is that queer people play video games and want to be represented. Christian people haven't had to ask for representation for about 1700 years.
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u/Smart_Invite_2663 2h ago
Why the fuck did the Saudis want EA? MAKES no fucking sense. Now with them at the helm and bitch ass Kushner involved, EA will be an AI slop only games producer.