I was disheartened to read on Wilhelm’s site that BioWare is being shut down by Electronic Arts. To me this was unexpected, but I suppose it shouldn’t have been. EA has been talking about focusing on sports and shooty-bang-bang games going forward, and BioWare doesn’t fit that mould.
But what have we lost in this action? And is there any hope of recovering from that loss?
What was lost
Bioware had been developing Role Playing games for over 30 years. The firm was founded in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada by three medical school graduates: Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. So for me it was a bit of a home town success story, especially since one of their main studios remained active in Edmonton right until the end of the company this year.
Notable games developed by BioWare include:
- Baldurs Gate I and II: TSR Dungeons and Dragons based RPG with an isometric view. Notable for its exceptional plot and roleplaying choices. Also for Minsc and Boo, the miniature giant space hamster. I played both but finished neither.
- Neverwinter Nights: Another TSR Dungeons and Dragons based RPG. My main recollection of the game was my nephew Shane using it as a platform for a RPG campaign. One player could act as the dungeon master (DM) controlling the game as it progressed.
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: One of the best Star Wars video games ever.
- Mass Effect I, II, III: A classic series set in space with a team of compatriots led by Commander Shepherd as you battle the Reapers across populated space. ME III was a bit of a disappointment for many, but the series was decidedly one of the best in recent memory
- Dragon Age I, II, III: Another extraordinary series, this one with a fantasy setting where the Dark Spawn and the Breach play major roles. One of my favourite characters, Flemeth, appears several times in the story
- Star Wars: the Old Republic (MMORPG): A massively multiplayer online RPG, one of the few such games with deep roleplaying built in to the main story lines. Each of eight different classes, four each for the light and dark side, has its own origin story that you play through effectively as a single-player game. Setting aside the MMO part you have dozens of hours of RPG opportunities
BioWare struggled to hit the mark with their last several games, in part at least due to interference from EA. In terms of single player games, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Dragon Age: Veilguard were both games I enjoyed. But they failed to earn the kinds of large sales numbers EA was looking for. More to the point of EA’s influence being felt one need look no further than Anthem.
Anthem was a live service looter-shooter thingy that was a terrible fit for single player RPG specialist BioWare. I’m pretty much 100% certain that Anthem was not a game BioWare wanted to make, it was a game EA made them create. Reportedly it wasn’t a bad game, but it just wasn’t good enough to justify the investment EA had made in it. The Anthem stink stuck with BioWare as far as EA was concerned. By 2021 all future updates were cancelled and the game servers were shut down in January of 2026.
Still to be written was another game in the Mass Effect universe. In fact, that was the informal name given to this incomplete game in development- Mass Effect: Universe. It was to be a game set after the events of the original Mass Effect trilogy but supposedly returning to our own Milky Way Galaxy instead of continuing the unpopular Andromeda setting. Beyond that, not much is known with certainty. The studio was shut down with several years of development left on this game.
Any Hope of Recovery?
As far as Electronic Arts is concerned, BioWare is dead. All of the staff are being fired and the company is being shut down. None of the development is being transferred to other groups- all work in progress is being cancelled.
EA is, like most large corporations, driven entirely by profit motives. If someone comes along and offers enough cash for the BioWare intellectual property (IP) they might just sell it. But I don’t know who if anyone has deep enough pockets in the current sickly game development environment to fund such an acquisition.
EA’s usual drive for profit over all other concerns is further complicated by their recent acquisition by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Like a lot of such deals, the debt to finance the acquisition- about $20 billion worth- is now EA’s debt. Just making the payments on that debt is costing about $700 million annually, turning EA into a losing proposition unless they shed a lot of costs.
I would expect a price to acquire BioWare from EA would be in the range of hundreds of millions if not low billions at least. And EA is not likely interested in keeping the price reasonable in order to preserve BioWare’s legacy- again, it is all about profit. If someone could buy all of BioWare’s assets for a reasonable price and hire a hundred or so developers who were fired from the company, I imagine they could make a good go of it.
Completing Mass Effect: Universe (or whatever it is called) could probably guarantee a couple of million sales: not huge numbers, but enough to pay for development. Then a second or third game could be developed- maybe another Dragon Age game if we are feeling optimistic. It would take the better part of a decade to earn back a couple hundred million against the original purchase price of the IP assets plus development costs. But so long as a steady stream of reasonably popular games is produced it would be possible.
But I think I would be kidding myself if I suggested this outcome of some “white knight” investor coming along to buy the BioWare IP was a possibility. Such an investor might exist, but probably EA would want more for the BioWare assets than could be justified. And large corporations are led by people with massive egos who wouldn’t want someone else to succeed where they have failed.
Summary
BioWare, a storied developer of well designed and crafted single player RPG games, is gone. Electronic Arts destroyed them, and has fired the last several hundred developers who worked there. The hoped-for next game in the Mass Effect series, Mass Effect: Universe, will never be delivered. It has all been sacrificed on the altar made up of the $20 billion debt EA has been saddled with due to their acquisition by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
It is just barely possible that someone might buy up the BioWare assets and continue where they left off. But I suspect the chances of that happening approach zero in the current games industry.
We have lost a great player, a company originally based in my home town of Edmonton, Alberta, in the realm of game development. They were makers of exactly the type of game I most enjoy playing. It is sad to see them go, and sadder still to see the profit-taking greed of their corporate overlords continue unabated. My fervent hope is that EA’s own Saudi overlords lose every penny they invested in the company, and that a new type of healthier game development and publishing structure producing the kinds of games I love grows up to take its place.