r/pcmasterrace • u/3Sayndre 7600 - 7800 XT Sapphire - 32GB DDR5 • 9h ago

News/Article EA shuts down BioWare

https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/ea-layoffs-bioware-shutting-down-respawn-dice-star-wars-battlefront-3-1236918715/
1.3k Upvotes

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768

u/Rukasu17 8h ago

Honestly the studio was just a shell of it's former self. I mean the latest dragon age shows it.

237

u/WonderSignificant598 8h ago edited 8h ago

Been coming for a long time. This news will throw old gamers for a loop (millenials and older gens) but bioware hasn't been BIOWARE since 2015. Lots of unsuccessful titles, games in development looked expensive.

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u/HeretikHamster 3900X/32 GB/RTX 2070 S 8h ago

It’s not throwing me for a loop. BioWare hasn’t been BioWare for a very very long time. Andromeda was the start of the fall and I pretty much wrote them off after Anthem.

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u/EyeAmKnotMyshelf 7h ago

I wrote them off after Andromeda.

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u/TheNightHaunter 8h ago

why in gods name did they not let you play as other fucking aliens in andromeda? if that game had let you play as an asari, taurian, salarian or hell krogran it would've sold better.

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u/Redcoat-Mic 7h ago

I doubt it.

It was a badly designed, boring game. Having a choice of cosmetic skin in character creator wouldn't have changed that.

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u/EyeAmKnotMyshelf 7h ago

A ME game where you actually got to choose your race would've been too easy a win for EA.

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u/darkeyes13 23m ago

Would it, though? To implement that would be to write specifically for each player race, which means more lines needed, more variation, etc. Either you get the game we got but with a different PC skin (people will complain about how changing player race/species does nothing to the story, or they throw a bone or two but it will never be enough) or you get an even shorter, shallower main story because they're too busy writing to the specifics of the playable character.

Andromeda was doomed from the start. People expected it to have everything the entire ME trilogy had. In one game. I actually think if you compare MEA and ME1 in a vacuum (pretend ME1 never had sequels), MEA presents a more complete story.

I say this as someone who still thinks the ME trilogy are the best series of games of all time.

5

u/Hemingways_Shotgun88 6h ago

I enjoyed Andromeda and Inquisition a lot even if the drop was obvious.

29

u/Captainbuttman 8h ago

millenial fans of bioware have been watching the decline the whole time,

19

u/liteAvvikandeIsASlut 8h ago

Millennials definitely saw this coming ever since the last Mass Effect, just took way longer that it should.

10

u/PanthalassaRo 7900 XTX, 7800x3D 7h ago edited 7h ago

Everything I heard about DA Veilguard until the first trailer screamed flop and from that point onwards was like watching a trainwreck in slow motion.

4

u/MachBonin Avenger2099 6h ago

DA:I was good and I believe their best selling game.

1

u/wareagle3000 AMD Ryzen 7 5800x, 32GB, Nvidia 3070 4h ago

They got the 343 treatment and funnily enough both died roughly at the same time.

Terribly managed studios that only produced garbage completely tarnishing the legacy that was keeping them alive. It's like watching the shitty loser son inherit a company and run it into the ground.

1

u/Rastamuff 37m ago

The cracks started showing on Dragon's Age 2

9

u/HarpersGeekly R5 7600 | RTX 4070 | 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30 8h ago

Why would it throw us for a loop when we lived through it all and predicted this would likely happen?

1

u/WonderSignificant598 7h ago

I saw a lot of super shocked "How could they???" reactions. Not everyone of course but when people grow up with a favorite game series/developer, sometimes they lose track of how long its been.

1

u/TallgeeseIV 2h ago

Maybe if they don't follow the industry. I've known this since Andromeda...

21

u/brainsapper GTX 970 8h ago

Hard not to notice a Ship of Theseus that has happened with a lot of childhood game studios.

5

u/NohFyoochur 8h ago

People made this comment about Bungie. I forget which Bungie guy it was, but he replied with a list of names of people around since the Halo days. The problem is even if there are like a dozen or so old guys, their last game had hundreds of other people on it. Halo Studios' last halo remake had over a thousand names. The original Halo was made by like 50 people.

This would be like having one single light fixture on a ship that's original and claiming it's the same ship.

3

u/donjulioanejo m2 MBA | also 5800X, 64 GB, 3080Ti 5h ago

It probably doesn't help that all the old guard (who just want to make good games) just get told to get with the times, or be labeled as toxic male gamer bros.

1

u/NohFyoochur 4h ago

It's clear the focus from the C suite is not on what video game players want to play in their video games.

It's all about live service recurring revenue and looking good in the media for people who don't even play the games.

2

u/VagueSomething 3h ago

Yeah Bungie currently has something like 4% of their staff being OGs. At that point you're into Homeopathy dilution and you're basically trying to tell us Bungie bathwater is the same thing.

1

u/Ok-Transition7065 6h ago

We need to be the damm king

51

u/sadacal 8h ago

People who think a studio's name means something is just stupid. It's always been about the developers working in those studios. When those people leave, how can the studio be the same?

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u/lankeykong_ 8h ago edited 8h ago

The problem with this line of thinking is that usually there is a lot of legacy talent left at these studios and crucially, even if a company managed to hold onto the exact same people their output still wouldn't be the same because people change over time. I don't hold the same values as I did 15 years ago, I like different things, I draw inspiration from different wells, etc. and the developers aren't any different.

0

u/sadacal 5h ago

What you said directly contradicts each other and only reinforces my point that studios aren't going to stay the same?

3

u/Slazor 7h ago

Ever heard of Theseus’ paradox ?

5

u/sadacal 5h ago

This is a bit different than Theseus' paradox. The developers are more like the crew of the ship rather than the ship itself. People are expecting because one crew were able to pilot the ship to do heroic feats then that means another crew of completely different people would on the ship would be just as capable of doing those same heroic feats.

1

u/Slazor 5h ago

Yet people also change, and a former bioware team wouldn't be a guarantee of success nowadays but I get your point.

1

u/donjulioanejo m2 MBA | also 5800X, 64 GB, 3080Ti 5h ago

I think that's the point. The studio is the ship, and developers are its parts.

If you replace all the parts (i.e. all the developers), it's functionally a new ship, even if it looks and feels like the old ship.

11

u/Turkeybaconisheresy 8h ago

Yea if this was 15 years ago I would be devastated. But Bioware has missed with every release after DA:I. Its sad to say but better it goes this way than they keep pushing out slop and continue to destroy any positive memory of the studio.

1

u/pit_supervisor 7h ago

including DA:I*

4

u/Turkeybaconisheresy 7h ago

Eh agree to disagree. I really enjoyed it.

2

u/DreamsServedSoft 6h ago

yeah Inquisition was the writing on the wall for what was to come

2

u/popcio2015 5h ago

yeah Inquisition was the writing on the wall for what was to come

Mass Effect 3 was that.

The ending of that game was so bad, that BioWare literally had to redo it after release.

2

u/donjulioanejo m2 MBA | also 5800X, 64 GB, 3080Ti 5h ago

Nah, DA:I had good writing and characters, despite the fairly repetitive and simplified gameplay compared to Origins.

I really enjoyed the story.

14

u/Hemingways_Shotgun88 6h ago

Reddit is the only place where you see people still defending Veilguard, purely on political grounds of course while pretending that's not the reason why.

Last I saw from the Veilguard defenders is they were saying it's at least equal to Inquisition lol

3

u/Ravendead 5h ago

Yeah, this was a long time coming. Over the last decade they have release 3 games and one remaster of the original Mass Effect trilogy. And those 3 games were, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Anthem, and Dragon Age: Veilguard. Andromeda was not received well, and had a terrible launch, Anthem was a colossal flop, and Veilguard made half of what they wanted it to make.

This is not EA's fault, this is mismanagement, inflated budgets, bad writing, and no focused vision during their games design phases. Most of their last games spent a lot of time in development only to be completely changed closer to launch. This was not EA meddling with their development this was BioWare management failing to do a good job.

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u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

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u/Bentok 8h ago

Sorry to get in the way of your hate train, but DAI was really good.

2

u/Rukasu17 8h ago

Personally i forced myself to finish it when i was younger. There was just something about the open world and dialogue that didn't get to me

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u/[deleted] 8h ago edited 8h ago

[deleted]

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u/Aethanix 8h ago

"above average open world slop"

so it was good slop?

ah it was a typo

1

u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

1

u/Aethanix 8h ago

thought the ab was an abbreviated above. my bad.

the DLCs still stands out in my memory as the best part of the game. probably because they ditched the open world bit.

1

u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

1

u/Aethanix 8h ago

Okay? i don't think you said it was a bad game.

1

u/AJ_Deadshow 8h ago

Good for slop is I believe what he means.

2

u/horrorpunx138 8h ago

And Anthem... and Andromeda.

2

u/crazyfighter99 7h ago

We really did see this coming for a long time. The last good game was probably Inquisition which came out in what, 2014?

Still sad to see one of the "OG" developers gone, even if it was just a name at the end.

1

u/rainbowtwist789 8h ago

very true, sad but honestly, won't lose sleep over it, as I know the real devs, the ones that made the ME trilogy are long gone.

1

u/FlukyS 7h ago

It is something I've been thinking about for a while, people attach so much good will to certain companies but rarely will there be loads of staff that stay in those companies long term. Like Bungie isn't Bungie from 15 years ago, Bioware the same, Riot the same, Blizzard, all of them have churn, retirements...etc and sure there are maybe some people joining because of the name and the philosophy of those companies previously but they are never the same long term. The magic goes away and hopefully spiritual successors and new blood take over that mantle.

1

u/AdminsLoveGenocide 7h ago

I didn't play it but technically it looked good. Shit writing and meh gameplay. But the technical stuff is not nothing.

1

u/Visara57 5070ti | 7600x | 32GB DDR5 CL28 | 1440p 4h ago

Bioware in name only

-1

u/pit_supervisor 8h ago

DA2 was the last real dragon age

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u/DaWizzurd 8h ago

The latest dragon age was EA's fault.

1

u/New-Reindeer-3112 8h ago

Same with Andromeda

-2

u/RedditVIBEChecked 7h ago

How dare you respect Bioware's identity! It identified as a good game studio!