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.
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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?