r/videogames • u/ChickemSandwick • 7h ago
Funny BioWare shutdown?? Oh no! Who could have saw this coming? /s
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u/Carbuyrator 7h ago
I shouldn't laugh, and I don't agree with the "culture war" narrative, but goddamn this image is funny
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u/SufficientFeature244 4h ago
Turns out, going on demented psychotic rants on social media about how much you hate your customers doesn’t sell games
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u/OGawdILoveTacos 1h ago
It really amazes me how so many companies allow their staff to do that nonsense over and over again. Like in who's right mind would they think antagonizing your consumer base is a good idea?!
It really goes to show they weren't making a game to be fun, but to send a message.
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u/mmarcik 7h ago
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u/Oneok-Field 7h ago edited 7h ago
Last Bioware game was Dragon Age Veilguard
It was controversially received for multiple reasons, but one was a monologue scene about transgender issues that some people felt forced modern issues into a fantasy setting. Bioware going bankrupt fuels the people who say "go woke go broke" which is what this meme is implying.
Take that criticism as you will, I won't comment on it further. But more importantly the game did objectively have god awful writing and other big issues even separate from the trans content controversy.
Whether or not "going woke" was it's downfall or the other issues I'll leave to your opinions.
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u/Mad_For_Nothing 1h ago
It is indicative of the capabilities of the people writing the stories if they believe this character is a good idea.
It shows a truly fundamental inability to create for the audience this game was intended for.
The true criminals here aren't the developers - it's the people who hired them.
The current crop of artists, writers and developers are by and large effeminate, weird and non-conforming. They go out of their way to OWN THE CHUDS.
These incompetent people, the ones hiring the incompetent workers, have lost companies BILLIONS of dollars.
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u/Barrel-Of-Apples 7h ago
The context is Bioware has been a shambling corpse for almost a decade now. EA wrung them dry of every drop of talent they had and then hung them out to be beaten with sticks as they struggled to hang on, just like they do with everything they acquire.
Ever since Mass Effect, it's been all downhill, except notably for Mass Effect 2, which was largely already pre-planned according to ex-Bioware devs. And culture war bullshit ensured that not only were slobbering moron fans constantly screeching at Bioware, but Bioware newhires tried to "clap back" at the fanbase, only making themselves look worse.
Now people are cheering their death, which only the blindest of gamers didn't see coming from a mile away.
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u/kuncol02 7h ago
Almost a decade? Muzyka and Zeschuk left BioWare in 2012. That was death of that studio.
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u/OGawdILoveTacos 1h ago
David Gaider was the original lead story writer for DA and he left in 2015 after inquisition didnt pan out well. He was replaced by a hack who got fired last year from bioware. That same hack is the one that did all the writing for veilguard and wrote all the terrible characters in it.
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u/HoddTodd 7h ago
Lmao at people that think this happened because "woke"
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u/Boostedtrash112 1h ago
lol but it did. Game didn’t sell because it didn’t appeal to its target audience.
Games that don’t sell lose money. Studios that lose money shut down.
What am I missing here?
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u/lordofmetroids 0m ago
Yeah but I would argue it didn't appeal to its target Audience for completely separate reasons than "Woke," reasons. It didn't appeal because it was 10 years after the previous game, and it pushed further into the Action/Adventure style, rather than the CRPG angle.
People wanted a more CRPG angled game when they heard Dragon Age was making a return in a post BG3 world, they got Arkham Asylum but bad.
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u/Material_Dot2444 55m ago
Well Anthem for a start.
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u/MinimumTrue9809 32m ago
Which was also woke.
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u/stadce071012 6h ago
This happened because of a mediocre Mass Effect sequel, followed by a $100M botched online game, followed by a laughably bad Dragon Age game.
That’s why it happened… Not culture war losers screeching buzzards at each other. Y’all are two sides of the same coin.
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u/MinimumTrue9809 31m ago
A mediocre Mass Effect sequel, followed by a $100M botched online game, followed by a laughably bad Dragon Age game.
A direct result of shifting their focus from making good games to making their games act as vehicles for political messaging.
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u/stadce071012 19m ago
Exactly.
The overwhelming majority of people have zero issues with diversity as long as it’s organic. Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk are good examples.
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u/medic110386 12m ago
This is such nonsense. If you think their motivation for making games was political messages you’re a fucking moron
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u/jetcatback 21m ago
This is pretty much it. BioWare had failure before veilguard but that game and its lengthy development just sealed the deal.
It’s a bummer I thought the next mass effect would give them one more chance.
On the plus side Casey Anthony is making the next kotor and a lot of ex BioWare devs are at larian so not like the talent didn’t find work.
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u/DesertDissident 5h ago
One might argue, without really disagreeing with you, that going "woke" was why it was "a mediocre Mass Effect sequel" and a "laughably bad Dragon Age game".
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u/Material_Dot2444 52m ago
Mass effect was always woke and what about Anthem?
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u/MinimumTrue9809 30m ago
No, it wasn't. The first three were not woke. Not whatsoever. Maybe if you consider games like Baldur's Gate 3 woke, which it isn't.
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u/_GeneralSeaweed_ 6h ago
You're agreeing it didn't happen because of the culture war bullshit... so, you are literally agreeing with one "side of the coin"
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u/stadce071012 6h ago
The terrible writing, sanitized narratives, and unlikable token characters all get associated with culture war bullshit by both sides. My point was every conversation always devolves to woke vs anti-woke drivel in every comment section.
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u/_GeneralSeaweed_ 6h ago
I can only put it as I have experienced these conversations, but from my perspective it's usually that these things get associated with culture war bullshit by people saying "this woke!!!" and then the other side is just saying that being "woke" doesn't have to do with why it's bad.
At least I've never really seen the reverse
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u/PoppingPillls 6h ago
Yeah, those freaks have no impact on gaming luckily like they complain constantly about most games... Instead of just having a life and moving on.
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u/HIs4HotSauce 2h ago
That’s the nature of how rhetoric works though— always hear from people on the polar extremes trying to persuade the masses in the middle.
And the people in the middle typically don’t care enough to post their opinion either way, so you’ll always see opinions of the extremes.
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u/Emergency_Lie42 1h ago
The chuds finally got something they can misconstrue as a win for their argument. They're going to milk it for ages.
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u/ChickemSandwick 7h ago
They literally released 3 games in the last decade. Anthem, Andromeda, and Veilguard. All shit games
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u/Mad_For_Nothing 1h ago
I have bought every other Dragon Age game before this one and played it to completion.
I didn't buy this one solely because of the woke writing and the blue binary.
Do with that information what you will.
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u/ImpossibleRow6716 7h ago
It is not because of woke, but it is because Bioware is ONLY woke. BG3 or KCD2 had woke too, but it also had good game under that. Meanwhile Bioware games like AC Shadows and DA Veilguard sacrificed quality.
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u/Oneok-Field 3h ago edited 3h ago
Yeah the issue is money is a finite resource and Bioware put their limit resources towards....this.
Them not having the money to hire good talent yet somehow setting aside money just for performative bits screams mismanagement and incompetency.
If you can cut it and make both a good game and diversity like BG3 then you don't get much pushback outside of some fringe groups.
The insult and outrage comes when you see money going towards performative content when that money could've gone towards making a not-ass game
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u/Auzik 6h ago
AC Shadows was not a Bioware game.
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u/ImpossibleRow6716 6h ago
Oh, that's right... But my point still stands. They did not have a normal good game in more than 10 years. Veilguard, Andromeda and Anthem were all trash. Very expensive trash. No talent will be lost by closing this studio
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u/Hansworth 5h ago
No game is gonna live or die based on whether it has a they/them option but veilguard went way beyond that.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Face502 1h ago
No, but having an ugly ass character coming out in a long winded rant as non binary, especially from a race of stoic warriors, would drive away anyone who isnt trans.
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u/_GeneralSeaweed_ 6h ago
I think they lost quality for reasons unrelated to "woke" though. Also as somebody else pointed out AC is not BioWare.
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u/Co-opingTowardHatred 1h ago
Gamers are complete fucking morons. They’re out here cheering for Saudi Arabia because of a non-binary character in a game.
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u/xtweeter22x Nintendo 7h ago
That’s literally what happened.
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u/SergeantThreat 7h ago
Yeah, BioWare was doing terrible while making the LGBT friendly Mass Effect trilogy
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u/Emergency_Lie42 1h ago
And Dragon Age being "woke" for its entire history as a franchise.
They're brainwashed, they will never admit it but they've been fearmongered into thinking that feminists will destroy gaming.
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u/Leather-Entry93 7h ago
Because Andromeda and Anthem were such hits
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u/_GeneralSeaweed_ 6h ago
To be kinda fair BioWare games were what some people now call "woke" long before Veilguard. And long before BioWare games started to get worse in quality, too.
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u/UnusuallyShapedChair 7h ago
Andromeda was woke as hell, I didn’t get a single erection from any of the females in that game!
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u/Snoo9648 7h ago
And that new dragon age being mediocre had nothing to do with it?
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u/Effective-Sock-6518 2h ago
Is this the new excuse we're going with now that you can't pretend it sold well
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u/Entire_Round_8872 7h ago
To these people "woke" and mediocre is the same. If it wasnt woke it all the problems would have somehow not been there
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u/EtheusRook 7h ago
Or they were bought by Saudi Arabia, who offloaded $20 billion of debt onto EA. And now the Saudis are tightening their purse strings because a re*arded pedophile started a war in the Middle East that blew up most of their refineries and closed down every route of oil shipping.
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u/ScipioTheGreatest 7h ago
Hahaha holy shit you will literally blame everything on your favorite boogeyman. Completely asinine.
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u/FanBladeFleshlight 7h ago
Yup, totally 100% because of the big scary "woke". Not because of multiple flop games, nothing to do with EA, NOPE! Only because of the DEI dragon burning studios down.
Freakin' chuds, lol.
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u/kuncol02 7h ago
Bioware is shut down because for last almost 15 years it's headless corpse of former great studio moved around by soulless corporation.
Almost all their talent left around release of ME3.0
u/HoddTodd 5h ago
Has nothing to do with EA getting bought out by Saudis and consolidating at all then huh?
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u/Still_Bit_7527 7h ago
It happened also because it is woke. I know a lot of people that basically didn't buy the game because of the 1 scene with this thing in the picture
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u/HoddTodd 5h ago
And how is that "woke" and not just bad writing? Baldurs Gate 3 had queer characters and "woke" elements and was a huge success.
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u/DesertDissident 5h ago
Because it prioritized deep roleplaying freedom over preaching.
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u/CanadianGuy208 4h ago
Yes! It was a choice to be gay or straight, it was never forced on us in BG3!. Also you had the freedom to F a 🐻 lol.
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u/Still_Bit_7527 5h ago
No? Depends on how you play it. Its all about choice. Noone wants to be forced into a lecture about US identity politics. I never even heard the word gender in "BG3".
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u/CultureSea5111 7h ago
Let's say it didn't. Being woke didn't save it either.
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u/DanceMattDance96 7h ago
Saying this to people on reddit is like talking to a brick wall. They will never see reason lol
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u/_GeneralSeaweed_ 6h ago
What reason? "Being woke didn't save it" isn't an argument. Nobody says it should've.
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u/Sylectsus 4h ago
You're right, they would have been shut down even if they had released good games that sold what they were previously used to instead of making preachy bullshit that, at best, could be said to have been fun to play in spite of the writing and story.
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u/Virtual_Link_3410 1h ago
"So im non binary" bitch its the apocalypse sit tf down. "Who doesnt love dragons??" Bitch every living sentient being in that universe hates dragons lmao
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u/EtheusRook 7h ago
Look, they may be putting the fries in the bag, but people like OP aren't even fit to do that.
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u/asher030 7h ago
*sits down*
*stares awkwardly for several seconds*
"Well. I'm nonworking."
*proceeds to spend long minutes acting out a middle school drama club worthy lecture performance about how socialism would be better so we can just 'create' regardless of profitability or having an actual audience*
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u/Mastershep11N788 4h ago
Uh no socialism wouldnt let us do that either since it would be highly unlikely that the freedom of speech under socialism would be extremely limited. Also no one would fund it.
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u/ReMeDyIII 7h ago
I played every Dragon Age game, but I certainly wasn't playing that one. Serves them right.
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u/RE4Merchant- 7h ago
Deserved. Bioware sat on their asses for years thinking their Mass effect and Dragon age cred will help float them. They left Mass Effect and didn't even try with Anthem. They killed any goodwill they had left and I'm glad they're out the door.
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u/Alucard-VS-Artorias 7h ago
No this is a total misreading of the situation.
What truly happened was that the original BioWare development team that made BioWare famous years ago pretty much all left once EA bought out the company.
But sure there was a few stragglers who didn't leave right away and stayed on to work on things such as Dragon Age 2 and later Mass Effect 3, but slowly over time those people left too. Especially after the indie gaming scene took off in the 2010s. Thats when the last of any original talent realized that they could just go independence and not be beholden to a corporation like EA any longer.
By the time we gets to about 2020s BioWare is just an artifact title on development studio made up of people who are probably not even born yet when KotoR was created. In reality anybody working at BioWare today is no more or less talented than anybody who works in any of the other EA in-house studios. The true talents that once made by BioWare famous hasn't been there in more than a decade.
BioWare being shut down today is more about EA finally realizing that name brand of BioWare no longer have any value to the consumer.
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u/RE4Merchant- 7h ago
It doesn't matter if it was the company it's matters what it turned into. They spent several years fucking up Anthem not even wanting their best mechanic, flying until EA wanted it. Mass effect was going down the shitter since 3 and Dragon Age hast been good since Origins. Every game they made after ME2 was shit and they were just lucky was all.
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u/SuchPresentation4476 3h ago
I never bought it and I think it was free at some point 0 interest in it they use to make great games before they lost the plot
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u/AdObvious2882 49m ago
Can't blame the LGBs for it going under, DA Inquisition was gay as hell and still got 3 huge DLCs and a pretty cool mp mode.
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u/Optimal-Chud 12m ago
Obviously the McDonalds outfit is a new addition but I've seen this odd looking character depicted for a long time, usually as a thumbnail bashing Veilguard. I've never played the game so I wonder if this is a real character or simply a caricature.
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u/Lumpy_Appearance5031 8m ago
Can’t believe idiots are still trying to defend failguard. It was trash. Not because it was woke but because it used woke to pretend it had any substance
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u/Cold-Tangerine-2893 7h ago
dawg, BioWare didnt shut down because they put a non-binary person in a Dragon Age game, or whatever the fuck you're crying about.
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u/CanadianGuy208 4h ago edited 3h ago
I didn't buy it becuse of the Non-binary characters.
So yes I helped bankrupt BioWare.
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u/Effective-Sock-6518 2h ago
People in here are really pretending there was no controversy about the game being woke before it released. First they tried to argue it wasn't woke before it released. Then they tried to pretend it actually sold well afterwards, and now they're trying to pretend it didn't flop because it was woke.
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u/Cold-Tangerine-2893 4h ago
probably learn how to spell the word "characters" before you use it in a comment. i dont think I've ever seen a 2nd grade level word misspelled 3 different ways. wild. But I digress. If you knew anything about the history of BW since the release of MEA you might understand why your point, anecdotal as it was anyway, is nonsense. and i say you MIGHT understand, because I'm not sure you're capable of seeing past your bias.
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u/ursodumbimadethis 4h ago
Clearly a typo, it's capitalized and punctuated.
You: "probably" "i" "3" "wild" "i"
Hahahaha
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u/Cold-Tangerine-2893 3h ago edited 3h ago
what are you trying to say? lol. you're trying to argue that spelling the word "characters" incorrectly THREE (sorry I used the number last time lol) different ways is the same as not capitalizing "i" or just using the word "wild" as its own statement? bro, we arent talking about essay writing. nobody here, except you apparently, gives a shit about proper grammar or punctuation in a reddit comment. People arent here to formally communicate. language is clearly meant to be informal here... has been for literal decades. That isnt the same as spelling a word that a 6 (er, excuse me, SIX) year old could write incorrectly 3 (oh sorry THREE) different ways. Also, its not a typo... obviously... a typo would be something like "charecter" or "charcter"... not "carector". At that point you simply don't know how to spell.
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u/ursodumbimadethis 3h ago
I'm saying you're an annoying idiot that failed miserably at an attempt to insult someone's intelligence while simultaneously demonstrating the behavior you used as the insult. I don't really care about the grammar.
That was funny, having to explain it to you is sad.
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u/Cold-Tangerine-2893 3h ago
im sure you found it funny. i sincerely doubt anyone else could. your attempt at whataboutism is not simply a stretch, its just a misunderstanding of the way language works. but hey, glad you're having fun.
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u/CanadianGuy208 3h ago
I have autism so yes I accidentally spelled it wrong, no need to be rude about it. Also the company is dead because of "woke" messages in our game's. I won't complain or argue with you, but I am disappointed they are gone I played all of the old classic game's from them ME 1,2,3 dragon age 1,2 and many more. Have a grate day full of positivity and happiness 😊 🙂
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u/Cold-Tangerine-2893 3h ago edited 3h ago
ok, so now we're doing woke anti-ablism from a guy who wont play a video game because they went woke. make any of this make sense, please. to me, you dont sound like a particularly positive, happy, loving person if you're boycotting games because there are characters who are different from you, but I dont know you, so I can't say for sure. What i CAN say for sure is that BW did not get shut down because of wokeness. Thats just a factually incorrect statement. Andromedas didnt fail because it was woke. Anthem didnt fail because it was woke... and despite what you believe, Veilgaurd didnt fail because it was woke. It failed because EA set it up to fail. BioWare started production of a single player game, then EA forced them to change course and make a live service game, without giving them more resources to do so, then when that was shaping up to fail, they were told to go back to making a single player game, but were once again not allowed further resources, or even the ability to reset the production. they were forced to Frankenstein together something out of the mess they were handed and we ended up with a game that was never gonna succeed. By the way, this isnt my opinion. This was covered in depth by Bloomberg. But hey, if it comforts you to think this is just "go woke go broke" knock yourself out. Certainly simplifies things
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u/Puzzleheaded_Face502 1h ago
The fact that they were shoving down woke BS down people's throats definitelly sank them.
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u/Cold-Tangerine-2893 13m ago
no it "definitelly" did not. i dont understand why all of you are allergic to google
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u/Mad_For_Nothing 1h ago
Yeah, dawg. Excellent argument.
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u/Cold-Tangerine-2893 15m ago
its not an argument its a fact. you'd have to be a 14 year old edgelord to sincerely believe BioWare went under because of woke backlash. I seriously worry for your well being.
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u/Diligent_Lemon_72 5h ago
3 trash games in 10 years but people will blame it on chuds for not buying their slop
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u/Haunting_Test_5523 7h ago
I feel like the people outraged are really just venting their hatred of EA. Bioware is just a name at this point coasting off of the success of 2 decade old games with pretty much no continuity with the talented teams behind those games. Bioware hasn’t released a good game in over a decade, had multiple flops in a row, and had nothing to show after 6 years of development for the new Mass Effect. This isn’t some cataclysmic loss to gaming
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u/NeonAnderson 1h ago
Veilguard was shit
But I'm still extremely sad that BioWare is shutting down
Like wtf couldn't they at least have restructured it? Invested in better talent and talent retention like surely there were better options than just going the nuclear option and getting rid of a company that for many people here defined their gaming childhoods (KOTOR, Mass Effect trilogy, Dragon Age trilogy, SWTOR)
I also had hopes that BioWare could turn a new leaf with Mass Effect. Get rid of the staff that ruined Veilguard and get a proper team in to make a proper RPG game like BioWare used to. But oh well seems Mass Effect and Dragon Age are permanently dead. At least we are getting a new KOTOR game from Arcanaut Studios
Good thing as well that they at least sold SWTOR back in 2023 to Broadsword as otherwise could have well been decided by EA now to just shut the game down along with BioWare's closure
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u/Lumpy_Appearance5031 9m ago
None of the people who made those games are there anymore and I don’t need the shit writers who made failguard touching ips people actually like. If we’re lucky no one will hire them again.
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u/SaltyMotor8549 51m ago
I mourned them ages ago after Andromeda. This is like a death confirmation of someone who had gone missing for ten years. Mass effect 1-3 and the original Dragon age are some of my favorite games of all time.
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u/Alucard-VS-Artorias 7h ago
Please no culture war for me, class war only.