Bullfrog (Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper, Populous, Theme Series) - Purchased by EA in 1995; shut down in 2001.

Westwood (Command & Conquer) - Purchased by EA in 1998; shut down in 2003.

Origin (Ultima, Wing Commander) - Purchased by EA in 1992; shut down in 2004.

NuFX (NBA Street) - Purchased by EA in 2004; shut down in 2007.

Pandemic (Destroy all Humans, Mercenaries, Star Wars Battlefront, The Saboteur) - Purchased by EA in 2008; shut down in 2009.

DreamWorks Interactive/Danger Close/EA Los Angeles (Medal of Honor) - Purchased by EA in 2000; shut down in 2013.

Black Box Games (Need for Speed, Skate) - Purchased by EA in 2002; shut down in 2013.

Phenomic (SpellForce, BattleForge) - Purchased by EA in 2006; shut down in 2013.

PlayFish (The Sims Social) - Purchased by EA in 2009; shut down in 2013.

Mythic (Dark Age of Camelot) - Purchased by EA in 2006; shut down in 2014.

Visceral (Dead Space) - shut down in 2017

Maxis (Sims, Spore, SimCity) Purchased 1997; gutted by 2019

Codemasters (Dirt, F1, Overlord) Purchased 2021; gutted by 2023

Bioware (Baldur's Gate, Kotor, Neverwinter Nights, DA:O, Mass Effect, some other terrible games) - Purchased by EA in 2007; shut down 2026

Respawn (Call of Duty, Titanfall, Apex Legends) - Purchased 2017; layoffs and cancellations, SOON?

Dice (Battlefield, Battlefront, Frostbite) - Purchased 2006; SOON? (YES, I understand they are profitable right now, but the rEAper always comes)

EDIT: added IP to Bullfrog and Bioware. Reorder list by shutdown date to make it pretty.

BREAKING:

Videogame giant Electronic Arts, in its first major move since going private this summer, is restructuring its studios business — which will result in layoffs of about 3% of global workforce.

The updates to EA’s studios operations were outlined in a memo to EA employees Wednesday from Cam Weber, president and chief studios officer, and David Tinson, president and COO. “Over the past several months, we’ve taken a hard look at our business, how we operate, and what it will take to lead in this next era of interactive entertainment,” the execs said. (Read the full memo below.)

Among the big changes: Games studio BioWare is shutting down after EA decided to pull the plug on its development of a new “Mass Effect” title. The company will close BioWare’s Canadian office in Edmonton. “BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we do not take this decision lightly,” Weber and Tinson said.

EA last reported 14,500 employees, meaning the layoffs affect around 400 staffers.

In more upbeat news, Weber and Tinson touted first-person shooter “Battlefield 6” as “a great success, and we learned a lot from the launch and the live service.” Going forward, in addition to future “Battlefield” titles, the execs said “we’ll be bringing together our Respawn and DICE studios to collaborate on a future project.” While they did not identify the project, multiple sources confirmed that this is “Star Wars: Battlefront 3″ for Lucasfilm.

EA also will continue to “invest heavily” in the “Apex Legends” franchise over the next few years, with plans to introduce new gameplay modes in multiplayer, along with other new experiences.

Elsewhere in the action-adventure segment, EA remains committed delivering on “our two huge launches coming up,” the execs said: “Marvel’s Iron Man” and the next “Star Wars Jedi” game.

At EA Sports, there are two new projects in development that will be revealed over the next few months, including a new, “social-first open-world experience for our American Football team that we call ‘Project Gridiron,'” the execs said. The studio also is in pre-production to bring back fan-favorite boxing game “Fight Night” after a 15-year hiatus.

Finally, in the lifestyle category, “we’re focusing on the long-term potential” of “The Sims” and skateboarding title “Skate.”, the EA execs wrote. “We’re going to prioritize our efforts on ‘Project Evergreen’ for The Sims to give the team more time to reach the full potential and vision for the game, and to help make this possible, we’re pausing development on ‘Project Lotus,’” they said. For “Skate.”, EA is “making changes to the studio to have a more focused, smaller team to deliver on a very clear roadmap for our community that we believe will build a healthier and more sustainable business,” the execs wrote.

On Aug. 4, EA closed the announced private-equity deal with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners in an all-cash transaction valued at $55 billion.

Read the memo from Weber and Tinson:

Hi Team,

First, thank you.

Through every major moment we’ve faced as a company, your commitment to creating awesome games and experiences for our players continues to be impressive. Together, we’ve built epic worlds and global communities that are part of the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Today, we’re the number one publisher in Western HD gaming. That’s an extraordinary position to lead from, and one we should be proud of. Yet our industry is changing quickly. Players have more choices than ever for their time and attention, competition is intensifying, and some of our biggest opportunities for growth are beyond the markets, platforms, and business models where EA has traditionally been the strongest.

That’s why, over the past several months, we’ve taken a hard look at our business, how we operate, and what it will take to lead in this next era of interactive entertainment. We’ve challenged assumptions, confronted hard realities, imagined new possibilities, and made deliberate choices in order to deliver exceptional experiences for our players and to drive sustained growth.

We believe our best creative work happens when we’re clear about what matters most for our players and give our teams the freedom to move quickly. So, we’re concentrating our teams, technology, and investment behind these three strategic priorities.

• Deepen Our Core: Our greatest opportunity starts with our franchises and global communities that have made EA a leader in interactive entertainment. This is where we’ve had to make our hardest choices. Saying no to some things we’re passionate about allows us to focus our teams and resources so we give our biggest opportunities everything they need to succeed.
• Expand Our Reach: The strength of our core business creates an enormous opportunity to reach more players across new platforms, markets, and business models. As one example, in regions as dynamic as Asia, success means building experiences that reflect local players, cultures, and expectations.
• Transform Our Business: We believe we can use our experience building interactive entertainment, together with our relationships in sports, to create entirely new ways for fans to engage with the teams, athletes and sports they love. These will be disciplined investments that only scale when they demonstrate real potential.

These priorities will bring clarity and focus to your work every day, and so will the way we work. We’ve spent time listening to teams about what’s working, what’s getting in the way, and what you need to do your best work. The feedback was consistent: you want clearer priorities, faster decisions, and teams that work more closely together. We’ve already begun simplifying how we work so we can spend more time creating and innovating for our players.

Our Portfolio Choices

Across our portfolio, we’re making deliberate choices to align talent and investments where we see the greatest opportunities for players and long-term growth.

In our Shooters business***,*** Battlefield 6 was a great success, and we learned a lot from the launch and the live service. We’re going to take those learnings, balance our resources, and leverage the technology to deliver a shooter portfolio that unlocks growth. In addition to our future Battlefield titles, we’ll be bringing together our Respawn and DICE studios to collaborate on a future project that will help us achieve that ambition. We can’t wait to share more when the time comes. We’re also continuing to invest heavily in Apex over the next few years by introducing brand new gameplay modes in multiplayer, and other new experiences, to expand the universe.

Action-adventure is one of the most competitive and high-stakes genres in the industry, where every game needs our full weight behind it. We’re continuing to deliver on our two huge launches coming up with Marvel’s Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game. Beyond that, we will concentrate our efforts on fewer simultaneous, large-scale projects, ensuring that every game we build in this space is fully set up for success.

As we focus on these larger opportunities, we’ve had a small team at BioWare working on early-development for Mass Effect. We’ve made the decision not to move forward with this development, which means we’re closing the studio and our Edmonton workspace. BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we do not take this decision lightly.

EA SPORTS continues to operate from a position of strength. We are fully committed and investing in the global growth of our FC franchise and across the full EA SPORTS portfolio. We have two new projects in development you’ll hear about over the next few months, including a brand-new, social-first open-world experience for our American Football team that we call “Project Gridiron,” and we are also in pre-production to bring back a beloved, fan-favorite in Fight Night, leveraging capabilities from our simulation fighting team.

In Lifestyle, we’re focusing on the long-term potential of The Sims and skate. We’re going to prioritize our efforts on “Project Evergreen” for The Sims to give the team more time to reach the full potential and vision for the game, and to help make this possible, we’re pausing development on “Project Lotus.” For skate., we’ve had a lot of success in bringing players into the game, and we need to create an experience that keeps them engaged over the long-term. To do that, we are making changes to the studio to have a more focused, smaller team to deliver on a very clear roadmap for our community that we believe will build a healthier and more sustainable business.

Building the EA We Believe In

The decisions we’re making in our priorities, how we work, and with our portfolio reflect our belief in EA’s future. Some open exciting new possibilities. Others are difficult, especially for the people and teams across the company who are directly affected. In those cases, we will support impacted employees in exploring other opportunities within EA, and we’re committed to treating impacted colleagues with care and respect.

We’re sure there will be questions about what these changes mean for individual teams and for EA more broadly. You can speak directly with your leaders to hear more on that, and we’ll make sure to spend time discussing our direction and the work ahead at our next Global Town Hall in November.

The past several months have strengthened our belief in what EA can become. We have extraordinary people, franchises that matter to millions of players, and opportunities to build experiences we’ve only begun to imagine.

Our responsibility is to make the choices, provide the clarity, and create the conditions for our teams to do their best work. We also want to give every game we choose to build its best chance to succeed for our players and fans around the world.

We look forward to building more great games and experiences together.

Thanks,

Cam & David

Bye Sandal!

I honestly believe most devs would rather you play their own game for free (and MAYBE decide to buy it later if you like it?) than you playing a cloned slop of it and completely missing the original one.

Just do some research for like 5 minutes, it's worth it.

Steam NextFest is not perfect, but it was a very good place to get visibility and try a whole lot of game demos, but now it's getting ruined at breakneck speed.

One example I suspect many other share is that Fallout: New Vegas was correct that the ancient Romans did not pronounce the letter C with an "S" sound, so Caesars name is pronounced with a "K" sound. There's other examples, I didn't know what ichor was before playing Monkey Island.

For me, it’s the full package: exciting gameplay, amazing visuals, a great atmosphere, pure spectacle, and – most importantly – a real sense of fun. It feels like a game from the PS2 era in its absolute prime, brought back with modern production values.

And, of course, the music is on another level. It elevates every mission and makes even the most ridiculous moments feel genuinely epic.

It’s everything I’ve been missing in gaming for a long time. If you’re still on the fence, just try it. It genuinely reminded me why I fell in love with games in the first place.

I have attached the main theme, please, do yourself a favour and give it a shot :)

I love the story telling and arcade feel of this game. Also runs well on handhelds.

i was disappointed to found out that you can only recruit upto 4 members to your squad in game ,so i reverse engineered it to allow us to recruit 12 members instead (work in progress)

Quite the upgrade if i don’t say so myself!

Sharma’s turnaround strategy is about focusing on hardware, player experience, high-value franchises, updating Xbox’s tech, and meeting gamers where they’re at. 

“We’re not here to do the minimum viable thing to just have a good business,” she said. “We’re here to be the No. 1 entertainment company.”

Some of her vision is becoming clearer. Xbox is planning a major overhaul of Game Pass that would have players choose features à la carte, including add-ons for console-only games, cloud gaming, and multiplayer, with the system operating on a tiered structure, according to people familiar with the strategy. Sharma also plans to release a next-generation handheld device by the 2027 holiday season and the next console by the holidays in 2028.

Inside the company’s secretive lab, known as Building 87 on campus, she has been plotting with lead designers such as Carl Ledbetter about the next-gen Project Helix hardware that could get gamers to stick with Xbox for mobile play, tinkering in regular stand-up meetings over prototypes and which strategic partnerships might help Xbox evolve.

While she has a reputation for being blunt, she is also introverted. In meetings, she often sits back and listens, sometimes while on her phone, yet tracking every detail, stopping discussions to ask sharp, probing questions or offer direct feedback, staff members said. She’s often chewing gum, and she is known to call colleagues from her car to check in while on her morning commute.

“As a leader, you’re taught to be confident, and I think being curious is way more important,” Sharma said. “If you’re confident, you might be right, and if you’re curious, you will find a better way. If people understand what’s happening, they will come up with better ideas to fix it than anyone else will.”

....

Another noticeable shift has been to steer financial resources away from smaller studios toward those that make Xbox’s most iconic franchises, with the goal of more frequent major releases. (With Minecraft, specifically, the goal is to make it more competitive with Roblox, which is popular with younger generations). Brian Fargo, a game designer who is developing the upcoming first-person role-playing game Clockwork Revolution, told Fortune that under Sharma, studios must present a clear, commercial “investable business case” rather than expecting blank-check funding.

The hard-nosed approach to costs is also evident inside Xbox. So far, Sharma has cut 1,868 people as part of plans to reduce headcount by 3,200 during the next year, and she’s slashed several management layers. She’s planning the next rounds of layoffs for this month, November, and January, people familiar with the plans said, although layoff plans can change. Among the laid-off have been devoted staff members who had worked at Xbox for decades, which could mean a loss of valuable institutional knowledge. 

Some employees have appreciated Sharma’s transparency, but the decision to structure the layoffs in several waves has left some staff demoralized, feeling as if they are sitting under a yearlong cloud, waiting to see if their roles will be eliminated next. There have also been some hiccups: Fortune identified at least one Xbox employee who was laid off but then given a chance to stay at the gaming unit.

Sharma acknowledged the high-stakes environment she’s navigating and tough decisions she’s had to make, but said she values people and doesn’t intend to be transactional. At an organization as big as Microsoft, there’s also been inevitable drama, including a recent rekindling of an old turf battle between the Xbox and Windows teams.

The two sides have clashed over what software should run Project Helix, the next-generation hardware. Windows leaders wanted an upcoming handheld device to use a trimmed-down version of Windows Home. Sharma’s team, meanwhile, has sought to build and control its own software to get the best gaming performance. 

Tensions ran high enough that a senior Xbox executive threatened to scrap the handheld project rather than adopt the Windows build, according to people briefed on the clash. Xbox is now largely controlling the direction of the operating system for the project, though Sharma emphasized the two still collaborate closely, saying, “We can’t build Helix on our own.”

Some people familiar with the matter also said engineering deadlines for Project Helix have been moved up by at least several months, putting pressure on development teams to get the work done faster, including by using AI. Responding to how AI affects Xbox’s goals or place within Microsoft, Sharma said she won’t use “AI for AI’s sake,” viewing it as a tool to solve specific engineering and performance problems such as developer workflows.

Successfully navigating those kinds of conflicts will be key if Sharma is to build up the authority and credibility necessary to get Xbox back on track.

Before Nadella chose her to run Xbox, Sharma led the product side of the group that built Microsoft’s AI Foundry platform and was also involved in products for the coding AI tool GitHub Copilot. She’s one of several newer or younger executives whom Nadella is entrusting as longtime company leaders continue to exit during the fast-moving AI boom.

...

Active console usage has rebounded year over year, compared with the previous year’s decline, and Sharma said she expects financial improvements to start showing in Microsoft’s fiscal 2027. As it stands, the price of the Helix console has internally been projected to cost consumers between $1,200 and $1,800, unless Microsoft decides to subsidize the cost.

Some of the bigger things in the trailer:

• They appear to have added black flag style ship combat and underwater exploration but with the ability to use various mounts underwater like a submersible or hitching a ride on a killer whale. You can also design the ship itself.
• There's a sims-like building editor where you can design your own place or business.
• You can now micromanage the businesses you set up at captured outposts. Design the shop layout and also what to sell and for how much.
• You can now marry various NPCs and this apparently has an effect on your greymane camp
• There's now an area where you can do a boss rush of bosses you've cleared already for various rewards.

Clair A was my first time playing the game in general.

I asked this about a year ago and got a few good suggestions (and some frankly bizarre ones), so I'm back to check in again.

I'm looking for games like Factorio/Satisfactory/Dyson Sphere Program, but lacking the little main character pawn that runs around and individually mines/shoots stuff/builds. Essentially, I'm interested in a factory god game. If there's a personal inventory, it's not what I want.

Games like this I've played:
Factorio: negative: has a character pawn that you can control. I'm told you can turn it off once you get established, but...
Dyson Sphere Program:also has a character. Pro: the character is a mech that can fly through space. Con: last I checked, the enemies couldn't actually be permanently driven out of a system.
Shapez 2: Fun, but a bit too "each challenge is its own thing" for my tastes.
The Crust: Potentially good, but I feel like it needs some more balance passes before it moves into actually enjoyable for me. Also, not super enjoying the attempt at welding Factorio and Rimworld and also a market simulator together.
Outworld Station: Kinda fun but the wonky transfer mechanics make it less than pleasant for me to play.
Plan B: Terraform: Solidly "okay". Caveat: haven't played the most recent set of patches.

Games I've had suggested that don't really fit what I'm looking for:
Anno series: They're more management (which I do enjoy, but scratches a somewhat different itch) than factory. Also, fuck Ubisoft.
Solar Expanse: Again, more management than factory. Plus side: rockets!
Rimworld: Um?
Dwarf Fortress: Ummmmmmmmm...?

Edit: To maybe explain a bit better, I'm specifically looking for factory games that have some form of direct logistics control (conveyor belts are the main way this shows up, but rail lines, drones, etc all work) and are about, well, expanding a factory. I'm differentiating these from more classic management games where you're controlling, say, a group of people who have limited access to resources and are building a village using those resources (Frostpunk or the Anno series, for example) or abstracted logistics games where you're moving stuff around but not really controlling the nitty gritty of individual inputs and outputs (Railway Empire). I like that factory games can constantly expand in a way that management games, by design, usually can't.

My issue with the main character thing is I've gotten really tired of the "oh, I have all of the things I need to build this design in storage, but I didn't remember to click this one stack before I left so I can't actually build it and have to go back and get that stack or I need to sit here and manually mine resources so I can make stuff in situ" experience. I'm aware that a lot of games eventually have ways around this (Factorio apparently lets you unlock drones at some point and stop using your character, DSP lets you use the little logistics drones to automatically drop stuff in your inventory, etc). Really, any time part of the game loop is "you must manually mine the thing to build the other thing and then you can automate unless you screw up and then you have to manually mine again" it's not what I'm looking for here.

Had an absolute blast doing these, couldn't wait to share. Some process pics for those who wanna see sketches/rough work.

Also, the 210 X 330 portrait format has survived so many changes in resolution, 800 x 600, 1024 768, 1080p, 4K UHD, that's some insane golden ratio shit. Anyways, hope you like it.