BioWare doesn’t own the IP, EA does. The studio at this point has no value to them and selling BioWare would only generate income if they included the ip which they won’t.
EA will either sit on the IP or get another studio to make a mass effect game.
Yep EA especially is just like a goddamn dragon with hoarding this stuff. Its practically tradition for them to buy a studio, shut it down, then sit on all their ips forever, likely forgetting they existed.
It's sadly more profitable for them to shut down the IPs that could be or are their competition rather than investing money into expanding that IP. You don't have to worry about Dragon Age flopping under you or flourishing under someone else when you can just slowly milk to death what you have while profiting off your big titles
Everything maximises profit now and it's trully sad
If that was why, all the game publishers would do it.
And they do not. Most game publishers are willing to licence IPs out, even often to fairly small companies (for example, BattleTech and Shadowrun which are IPs owned for videogames by MS, but which they licenced out).
EA's behaviour was unique in the games industry. No-one else habitually shut down studios and then just totally sat on IPs and didn't use them, because it's not "more profitable". There's not competition to a game you're not making. They're not "milking" anything. I'm not sure how think milking works, but you need a cow that's doing stuff, and not one in a vault forever!
This is actually a non-profit-maximizing behaviour. Maximizing profits would mean aggressively licencing this stuff out when it's unused (maybe not if you had a direct competitor, but EA has competitors to 99% of the stuff in the IP vault).
Though, I do not see EA doing anything to build new brands which are not mass compatible in the future unless we see a sudden huge economic uptick.
From EA:
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.
I doubt this will work well for shares worth. Their stocks are going down after this. Some sort of restructuring would be far better choice than just closing. Who knows, maybe EA goes similar direction as ubisoft - which is down. Would be very deserved.
Because of Disney copyright laws last for a long time. Like Steamboat Willy (the precursor to modern Mickey) became public Domian only a few years ago.
Apparently if the IP is sold then the original holder can reclaim the IP after 35 years under US copyright law, as Richard Garriott will do sometime next year. Of course he fully sold Origin Systems to EA, so I don't know how it would work with BioWare due to the whole holding group merger/partnership prior to the acquisition by EA. But depending on who 'sold' BioWare to EA they could reclaim its IPs by 2042.
IPs are assets. If EA closed voluntarily, they would probably sell off their assets. If they went bankrupt, they would be required to do so in order to pay off their creditors.
It's worse than that. They don't even drain them for all their worth, they drain them, and then stick everything a vault forever. Draining them for all their worth would at least mean selling/licencing the IPs.
That's it, Visceral. They were the ones with a Star Wars game in the works that just got canned because EA shut down the studio. Couldn't remember the name.
They dont own the IPs though. EA could still theoretically make any Dragon Age or Mass Effect game in the future by any of their studios. Though it seems unlikely to happen at this point. This is why I simply think EA is just worse than a Square Enix for example who rid themselves of IOI in 2017 but let them have a lifeline in the form of the Hitman IP and we saw how that eventually worked out and saw the studio come out with a great hit this year.
They are only interested in games that has low effort DLCs / Expansions that people pay a premium for (Sims), or Sports games where people shell out money for a chance at getting good players ... or loot boxes ....
I don't remember where I heard this so take it with a grain of salt but I heard the Saudis didn't even know EA make none sport games when they bought it
Yeah, but this makes it very clear that they value retaining the IP more than they would have gotten for a complete package sale, an important thing to keep in mind here are the licensing deals, so for example if the Amazon series does well, they can expect a good check from them for every subsequent seasons that gets greenlit of the Mass Effect show.
If they would have sold BioWare with the IP, they would have to find a buyer that is able to take the liability that the studio has become into their books. I honestly dont think EA would have fetched a good price here despite how valuable those properties might be (or seem to us).
so for example if the Amazon series does well, they can expect a good check from them for every subsequent seasons that gets greenlit of the Mass Effect show.
The Amazon series had Bioware people working on writing it, it's likely going to die soon, it was an early project, those end up canceled all the time.
If they would have sold BioWare with the IP, they would have to find a buyer that is able to take the liability that the studio has become into their books.
Nobody wanted to buy Bioware presumably, it's indeed a weight more than a boon now. But if they would have sold it, they would have sold the IP with it (otherwise Bioware is really worthless). They didn't have buyers apparently
That’s not what happened with IoI. Square Enix was fully ready to shut down the entire studio until IoI took on a lot of debt to buy themselves out. Square Enix didn’t give them Hitman as a lifeline IoI bought it back from them right as they were about to be cut from the company.
It’s why Hitman 2 came with a lot of graphical downgrades like the cutscenes being still images. IOI just couldn’t afford an in or out of house animation team and so they just posed some models and hit record.
That requires profit to be the primary motivation. The Saudis and their sycophants like Kushner didn't buy it for profit they bought it for culture war reasons. The second they took over it was certain anything queer or rebellious would get the bone saw. So of course they'd prefer to shut it down, why let something they disagree with live when they can kill it?
Not at all defending Kushner or the Saudi investment firm that purchased controlling interest in EA, but they haven't exhibited a pattern of censorship with any of the other studios they have a controlling interest in.
Ah okay, gotcha. And yeah, absolutely correct. Hell, look at The Sims. That game is still queer as hell and chock full of vampires, monsters, ghosts, etc and all of them are still able to bone each other in a furious cloud of dust and moans lol
South Park had a very solid contract already when the takeover happened that means the writers keep total creative control and get a huge payout if the show is cancelled. They've basically been pushing it as a way to call Paramount's bluff to get a billion plus dollar payoff and not have to do the work.
Bioware hasn’t been an influencer in culture since the disastrous release of Andromeda, they inherited EA’s debt they’re just shutting down future money sinks and focusing on FC and other established games to make money to pay off the debt because the oil money slowed down with the war
That feels like a disingenuous take. Do the Saudis do stuff like that? of course. But (while I personally enjoyed Andromeda and thought Veilguard was a solid 7/10) you can't pretend that Andromeda, Veilguard, or Anthem sold or reviewed well. I'm honestly surprised it took them this long to be shut down.
This is also my theory. This is culture war bullshit, and it’s what happens when your culture is for sale to anyone with money, including cultural adversaries.
They didn't take the debt. EA did. Because apparently you can buy companies with debt said companies are taking for whatever reason (it's late stage capitalism)
Even worse, the purchase was funded by loans against the value of EA (or at least a major part of it) and EA has to service it, if they default ownership goes to the lenders... so the Saudis have essentially paid nothing in practice, they just borrowed against EAs value to buy EA ... and then passed the loan on to EA ... so EA need to prioritise profit above all else, and that will be their focus ... for decades (my take) ... which is why there has been layoff warnings, studio shuttering etc. ...
Nah, otherwise they would be cutting the Sims which is the most openly gay thing ever and instead they are greenlighting more projects for it.
I don't like the Saudis buying EA, I hate it too, but they are in this thing to make money. At most they will just make sure that when the games are sold in Saudi that it won't have the stuff they find objectionable and they will happily make money off the rest of the world.
Pretty sure EA wants to keep the IP. At some point in the future they might want to release another Dragon Age or Mass Effect. The name alone will still generate some attention.
They're about to have a lot of debt that needs paying off. The most likely path forward for them is they sell off anything that doesn't print money and only keep things that do, like the sports franchises and the Sims.
The properties can still be sold off, and any new studio is going to most likely start over from nearly scratch on a project if they're to try to make a ME5. It's doubtful they were anywhere far into development anyway given it's been totally mum in any details outside of a picture and recent trends haven't been promising from Bioware's efforts in the story writing department.
Now that said, EA probably aren't going to sell off a franchise that only a smaller studio is probably going to want to buy, and they may just sit on it for a long time just to make sure no one else makes a great game on the franchise that they can't profit off of, but they need to make money off it beyond the bubble of sorts games and their stupid cards gacha shit do who knows.
Maybe if a Larian gets a itch to make a sci-fi and wants to tell a story in a world that already exists but to add their own twist in it. Or a Project Red wants to do something in space.
I think if somebody was put to the task of looking at the books at BioWare , which has to legally happen in order to sell the company they would find that every single valuable resource had been sold off by EA years ago, and it would be clear that anything other than the IP’s are completely unviable.
Why would anyone want to buy a company that's been dog water for the last decade plus? What business sense does it make to buy a company that announced a new Mass Effect 6 YEARS AGO and still says it's "in early development"? "Oh but they made the Mass Effect trilogy and some other good games"...yeah, a long time ago...
EA is going to let the IPs burn on a pile with all the other IPs they're letting burn
Unfortunately the Mass effect IP is just way too expensive. Even if EA was willing to sell it - no studio at this point would touch it.
They would need to not only recover the cost of the purchase but development too, Which is a huge risk. Companies like Microsoft and Sony are paying dearly for such purchases and pretty much every publisher under the sun is taking it as a warning to not overextend.
What you're going to see is most likely a cheap and shitty mass effect mobile game. Maybe a gacha, who knows.
Buying and selling a game studio is a weird process, because the valuation of the studio is so specific. The value of every computer, desk, chair, and all the other things in an office is taken into account.
EA is likely going to sell all of that stuff or move it to other locations within the company. It's just easy to peice it out than to find a buyer who wants literally everything.
In addition, closing a studio stops the financial bleeding it causes asap, where as selling a whole studio requires keeping it active while it hemorrhages money.
From there, they can sell the really valuable stuff, like the IPs BioWare has, namely Mass Effect and Dragon Age. They can find a buyer who just wants that, the rights to the IP, without having to sell a ton of bagged.
However, EA is known to abandon IPs with the studios they close. If we haven't gotten a new Ultima game, we likely won't get a new Mass Effect.
It is possible that keeping the IPs increases EA's valuation, which makes shareholders happy. EA is more valuable with the rights to Mass Effect, even if they aren't using it, than they are without it.
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u/Nickillaz 8h ago
So shutting it down is easier than selling it off? Surely some company would want Bioware even just for the name or the IP?