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community weblog

"There is nothing easy about writing those words."

BioWare, 1995-2026. Electronic Arts shut down the game developer behind major titles and series like Dragon Age and Mass Effect.
From the Ars Technica writeup: EA doesn't have public stockholders anymore after a $55 billion deal led by Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners took the company private last year. At the time of that move, analysts told Ars to expect "layoffs, studio closures, and [selling] of IP" as the newly private and now heavily debt-ridden company put "a bigger focus on live services, more focus on annual sports franchises, [and] microtransactions" to help increase profits.
posted by doctornemo on Oct 21, 2026 at 6:17 PM

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I loved the original Baldur's Gate series. Got the other games -- NeverWinter Nights, Icewind Dale -- but then BioWare got EA'd to death.
posted by CCBC at 7:05 PM

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posted by limeonaire at 7:25 PM

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Everyone has their favorite Bioware series: mine is Dragon Age. It's funny in that I don't think they ever got the formula for this series completely right; it started out as a sort of large and somewhat paunchy traditional CRPG with a real-time-with-pauses combat system that was feeling its age, and then sort of lumpily transitioned over time to its final destination: a repetitive action game with about the same amount of RPG elements as any other AAA game these days.

But. At its best moments, Thedas (yes, The Dragon Age Setting) was a world that felt like it was populated by real peoples and real problems, and threaded the needle of just fantastic enough but still grounded. It had heaps of gore and grimdark and yet usually felt it it wasn't doing it just for effect. And it introduced me to some of my favorite characters in video gaming, particularly the Inquisition gang, who I still remember fondly.

Anyway. Bioware is just a name but with EA now firmly in the hands of the absolutist kleptocrats, I doubt we'll see their IPs, or any of the vast library that EA theoretically owns, anytime soon.

(To be honest I'm still mad about Origin Systems)
posted by selfnoise at 7:50 PM

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posted by detachd at 7:53 PM

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Leveraged buyouts should be illegal.
posted by adrienneleigh at 7:55 PM

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I still have my boxes of KOTOR and Jade Empire. I also really enjoyed the D&D games as well. The only Dragon Age game I finished was Inquisition, which I got for the PS4. I never played the Mass Effect games, since they were mostly X-Box, and I had a PS2, then 4.
I've seen it suggested that they might try selling of their IP, if they think that they can make more in the short term by doing that than by continuing to sell their existing games.
I just got Zero Squadron, and the announcement doesn't bode well for continued support of that game, either.
posted by Spike Glee at 8:10 PM

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Fuck EA for this. Fuck Silver Lake, and Fuck Jared Kushner.

Paragon - Pitch Kushner off a cliff
Renegade - Pitch Kushner off a cliff
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:12 PM

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I never played the Mass Effect games, since they were mostly X-Box, and I had a PS2, then 4.

Mass Effect is playable via Steam now.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:13 PM

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EA acquired Bioware in 2007, while Dragon Age Origins (one of the all-time greatest video games) released in 2009.

By all accounts EA gave Bioware too much of a free reign in managing its projects - see the various deep dives on what happened to Anthem. In fact, Bioware made almost no progress on the game for 5 years (2012-2017). Ironically, the best part of Anthem (the flying mechanic) was forcibly added by an EA executive who was frustrated by their lack of progress and direction in the game, he arrived and made an "executive" decision for them and it then formed the basis of the wildly popular 2017 E3 demo which blew everyone's minds.

In another irony, in EA's push for "always online" gameplay, they accidentally created an extremely fun multiplayer mode for Mass Effect 3, where you teamed up with 2 other players in a fireteam to fight against waves of increasingly difficult enemies. There were so many different characters and weapons to collect and play. I actually did not play the Mass Effect 3 single player at all, I only played it for the multiplayer.

I'm sure EA didn't help, but I would argue Bioware was well capable of failing on their own, they might have sunk themselves with Anthem almost a decade ago without EA funding them.

I've spent a bit of time thinking about this - is a company a kind of ship of Theseus? Sure, Bioware made some good games a long time, but if every single one of those employees and leaders have since left, is it still the same company?

I have a theory that the role of leaders is to introduce new employees to the mythos of the company - the great things we have achieved in the past, exactly how and why we achieved them, and all this is to give them the confidence we will continue achieving greatness in the future. And if I cannot convey this with clarity and fully convince them to buy in, then I have failed in my job. Without this kind of direction, we are all just blundering around going through the motions to collect a paycheck, which is the kind of environment I sense from seeing the insider interviews on the Anthem debacle.
posted by xdvesper at 8:22 PM

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Most of the important people in early Bioware were out by 2015, so, yeah, after that, in a sense, it was a different company. I think that another issue is a lack of focus. I remember reading that Anthem went through a bunch of directors, with each one changing the focus of the game. Similarly, Veilguard started out as a single player game, morphed into something else, and then back, burning resources each time. If they'd just stuck with the original vision of the game, I think it would've turned out a lot better.
posted by Spike Glee at 8:50 PM

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a bigger focus on live services, more focus on annual sports franchises, [and] microtransactions

All the things I am firmly not interested in. Ah well.

And it introduced me to some of my favorite characters in video gaming, particularly the Inquisition gang, who I still remember fondly.

Me too. About time I did another playthrough, I think. I just love those guys and their banter so much.
posted by andraste at 8:59 PM

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GOP dipshits: Sharia law is the greatest threat to America!

Saudis: go on America media company buying spree (Twitter, EA, Paramount / Skydance / WB)

GOP dipshits: Deeeeaaaaarrborn! Scary!
posted by Sauce Trough at 9:37 PM

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I remember buying the first Baldur's Gate. Soooo many discs. What a great game.
posted by Pendragon at 12:01 AM

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Where have you gone, Stuart Smith? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
posted by johngoren at 12:44 AM

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Thedas (yes, The Dragon Age Setting) was a world that felt like it was populated by real peoples and real problems, and threaded the needle of just fantastic enough but still grounded. It had heaps of gore and grimdark and yet usually felt it it wasn't doing it just for effect. And it introduced me to some of my favorite characters in video gaming, particularly the Inquisition gang, who I still remember fondly.

Inquisition is one of my favorite games and I absolutely agree. There's a lot I could mention; the beauty of the regions, the use of silence, the drama and intrigue. But most of all I remember how I felt at the end of my first playthrough. A genuine affection for the characters (especially Sera, don't @ me), a bittersweet sort of satisfaction that lingered for days. Such a good game.

Gawd this industry is deteriorating.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 1:10 AM

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posted by rosiroo at 2:30 AM

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> ...live services, more focus on annual sports franchises, [and] microtransactions...

Not oversaturated markets at all, I'm sure they'll do well.
posted by at by at 2:50 AM

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Loved BG, the first Dragon Age and especially BG2. So much of their subsequent stuff in the DA franchise was trash, including the most recent game which was repetitive button mashing with lots of going backwards and forwards over the same ground. Its a shame they went to shit, not that they have finally shut down.
posted by biffa at 3:32 AM

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EA has been acquired by the Saudi's PIF.

Bioware, for 20+ years, has been queer inclusive.

There was only one way this was ever gonna go.

My industry is dying. Long live the industry.
posted by andreaazure at 4:41 AM

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So much of their subsequent stuff in the DA franchise was trash, including the most recent game which was repetitive button mashing with lots of going backwards and forwards over the same ground.

Ok, so DA4 (Veilguard) was indeed a bad game, but there are certainly redeeming bits to it I want to defend. The writing and visuals were extremely bad. But 3 things stand out to me as really well executed -

1. Loot and Puzzle Solving / Map Traversal - among the best I've played. More games should follow what Bioware have achieved here. One major problem games have is how to manage exploration puzzles - what can you give players as a reward? Giving players weapons and armor quickly overwhelms them with trash, remember Skyrim and the 300 pounds of crap you had to carry around. Because the reality is most things you pick up won't be better than what you have already, you'll mostly be getting upgrades from boss fights or the major plot progression rewards, not exploring some back alleys and finding stuff under a random box. Some games just give you coin, which is really underwhelming - you solve all these cute puzzles or figure out how to get up to the chest on the roof, and it's just a few gold coins, how do you get excited for that?

Bioware solved it by giving each item an upgrade path, and getting duplicates progresses the item along that path. This means that no loot drop is ever "useless" as it's always progressing some item you have, and by making respecs free, it allows you to adapt your build to whatever new drops you get. It solves the inventory space issue and the need to vendor trash, it adds a tonne of interest because you are incentivized to switch up your build to use the strongest weapon you have.

2. Decent Action RPG combat - well I'll just drop a short clip of my 2H warrior just smashing through a bunch of enemies, you can't say this isn't fun as hell.

3. Some of the story concepts aren't bad, it's just the execution is so poor. I want to mention the Qunari gender conflict thing -

Taash is Qunari, we have to go all the way back to Dragon Age Origins 15 years ago to where if you play a female character, Sten (a Qunari warrior) has some dialogue with you expressing his surprise and discomfort with the fact that you are a Warden.

The Qunari have an extremely rigid society where each person is born to play a certain role their whole life, and they place little emphasis on personal identity. Every role has a gender tied to it: warriors are men, priests and healers are women.

This is the mind blowing part - In Qunari culture, warriors are men. (and not that men are warriors).

That is, your gender expression is the result of your role. It's NOT about restricting what role you can play as a result of your gender, which is how our human culture usually views it.

So Sten is not saying that Females can't be Wardens: he's saying that Wardens can't be Female.

In the Qun, if you are biologically female, but display an aptitude and desire to be a warrior, there is absolutely no problem there. The Qun will happily recognize you as a man instead.

But what Taash is saying, is that, no, that's not right, I'm not a man either, I'm something else. And because of how rigid Qun society is, everything is black and white, there's no in between, there's no way for them to even acknowledge the conflict she is having. And so there's this storyline about how there's different cultures in Tevinter or even the Elves, and Taash being raised Riviani rather than Qun, she's outside the system, etc etc.
posted by xdvesper at 5:47 AM

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Pouring one out for Bioware. They were a shadow of what they had been, but for a good long while there they were the RPG people. I spent so many hours in the first two Baldur's Gates and their expansions.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:59 AM

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MetaFilter: we are all just blundering around going through the motions to collect a paycheck


Or maybe that's just me.
posted by nickmark at 7:55 AM

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I actually did not play the Mass Effect 3 single player at all, I only played it for the multiplayer.

Then you're missing out on a staggeringly good space opera. And I think I can speak to that, having been a Trekkie for about as long as Star Trek has existed, and having seen the first Star Wars movie at the perfect age, thirteen. Even with the numerous flaws and unlikelihoods in the lore (the Earth Alliance is a near-equal partner in the galactic community even though they only discovered the "mass effect" of the title in the Prothean ruins on Mars a mere thirty-five years prior to the events of the first game? Really?), the degree and depth to which it's developed still astounds me.

Anyway, I don't believe that EA wasn't behind the downfall of the franchise. Yes, Anthem was a bad and dumb idea; any game that started out with the code word Dylan (supposedly because they expected it to be as epochal as the advent of Bob Dylan) and ends up being named after an Ayn Rand screed is probably cursed from the get-go. But EA was a bit too eager to exploit the slop trough of hard-money loot boxes [Variety] to not have influenced the way that the games ended up. I know that you love multiplayer, and I never begrudged anyone who wanted to do that, but the single-player game got kicked to the curb; Mass Effect: Andromeda got only one real update to the single player game, even though the game overall was pushed out the door half-finished at best, but they kept updating multiplayer, because that's where the money hose was.

And now they are making it official, although I already kind of knew; they teased a new Mass Effect game, but the original teaser was six years ago, longer than the gap between ME3 and MEA. Maybe they really meant to make another game before the new owners showed up; maybe they just wanted to sell more N7 hoodies and figurines of Tali'Zorah vas Normandy. All I really know is that there are three games that I loved and played above and beyond all others: the original Marathon trilogy (there's a new game that AFAIK only has the name in common); City of Heroes, which keeps going thanks to some unusual circumstances; and Mass Effect. I feel like purging all traces of EA from my computer, but... maybe after one last playthrough. I was Commander Shepard, and this was my favorite game on the Citadel.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:02 AM

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All is not totally lost for people who like bioware-ish games!

Exodus, from Archetype which includes some BioWare veterans, should be out in the spring and is a pretty masseffectish setting. You can have [non-romanceable] uplifted octopus companions! There's shitloads of weird-ass might-as-well-be-aliens posthumans! EDIT: PeterFHamilton wrote a pair of tie-in novels to help explain the universe and while he's still utterly incapable of imagining a science-fictional society that isn't just southern England iiiiiiiin spaaaaaaaace, there's a lot less of women breasting boobily down the stairs.

Owlcat's The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is also in production with IIRC a next-fall target. While The Expanse is not as big and extravagantly scifi setting as Mass Effect (at least not until... that... happens), it's shaping up to be an action RPG with cover-based third-person shooting sooooo.... A recent production video says they got Nick Farmer to do more lang belta along with folks creating Belter gesture systems, so they've started to lean into it being The Expanse and not just Generic Setting For Masseffectish Shooter RPG!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:06 AM

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Waiting for the LoadingReadyRun CheckPoint where Graham says something like, "In other news: BioWare, creators of some of the most beloved games of all time and Anthem..."
posted by xedrik at 8:14 AM

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2. Decent Action RPG combat - well I'll just drop a short clip of my 2H warrior just smashing through a bunch of enemies, you can't say this isn't fun as hell.

This looks like it was on PC so maybe it had a more effective combat system. I was playing on a PS5 and it was pretty much button mashing, with hitting a spell button every time the cooldown ran through.
posted by biffa at 8:30 AM

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IMO, Dragon Age: Origins was the high point of the studio. They'd learned a lot about how to integrate narrative elements into gameplay in previous games, developing different strategies in ways that worked better. And companions had evolved from the original BG--where they were basically just a mini-bio and a catchphrase--to memorable mini-stories that'd integrate into the plot. Add in the evolution from a company that was vaguely aware they might have women playing (BG2, famously, had three women fawning over a male PC, but only a tacked-on romance for female PCs) into a much more inclusive male/female/gay/queer/trans friendly place.

But the games took so long to make and were expensive. They'd never try to the 6 different background things again. I think you could see that with DA2, which was an interesting attempt to tell a multi-year story but also an attempt to see if they could reuse maps and encounters so they could get a game out quicker.

But I also want to not that they often seemed to put a lot of energy into their engine building and didn't always come through narratively. At least twice (with NWN and KotOR) they turned something over to Obsidian for the sequel and we got much better and more innovative games from them built on that engine.
posted by mark k at 9:26 AM

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SF author Catherynne M. Valente posted on BlueSky about writing for the game:

"I now have permission to share something I hoped would be revealed with much more fanfare
I spent more than 3 years as one of the writers of #MassEffect4
It was one of the greatest privileges & GLORIOUS challenges of my life
So when I say I am devastated by the end of #MassEffect I REALLY mean it"

"All those times I said I was working on a Secret Project?
It was always #MassEffect, darlings.
My favorite game. The dream. THE dream.
'I would be so good at writing this huge franchise they should call me.'
And they did! It happened!
And then it didn't.
There is a hole. And always will be."

"I have been at the bar literally dripping tears over what you all will never see now.
It was going to be so beautiful. Really. It was so good."

"I'm trying to feel super cool about this, especially as I have MFA students arriving tomorrow for a writing retreat.
But I feel like a fucking widow. Like I lost a spouse I had all these gorgeous plans with."
posted by indexy at 10:19 AM

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That's heartbreaking. Cat Valente, for those who don't know, is a multiple award-winning-and-nominated SFF author who, in addition to her own work, wrote an ME novel and was a sincere fan of the game.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:13 AM

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It is long past time we simply forbade any and all corporate mergers, acquisitions, buyouts, etc.

I won't say every problem we have is the result of corporate mergers, but a whole lot are and the next Democratic President has a choice of either using the powers the Supreme Court granted Trump and actually unilaterally enforcing antitrust laws and not merely breaking up companies but shattering, or letting the country keep on the path to Fascism endgame.

For this specific thing, who knows. Maybe Bioware would have failed on their own, god knows they fucked up the ending to Mass Effect 3 well enough without any interference in the story by EA as far as anyone knows, but it never should have been owned by EA.

Much better Bioware either stood or failed on it's own than this ignominious buyout and then shuttering.
posted by sotonohito at 12:41 PM

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posted by Phssthpok at 4:05 PM

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A little add-on to mark k's comment: BG had an armor piece that changed your gender. Storekeepers and such would react differently to male/female. But BG2 brought in player mods which included various romantic options with different genders. Mods were one of the things that made BG great.
posted by CCBC at 4:13 PM

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Then you're missing out on a staggeringly good space opera.

I loved Mass Effect 2, finished 3 playthroughs with different classes, it really felt like lightning in a bottle. I watched my housemate play Mass Effect 3 and it didn't even interest me enough to start the campaign, but we had a great time playing the multi-player together with our friends.

There was something about the small scale of Mass Effect 2 that felt deeply personal and compelling - Cerberus goes through all the trouble to resurrect Shepard from some scraps of DNA because they believe they are the only one capable of identifying and recruiting the small team they need to run a suicide mission against the Collector base. A threat that the Citadel Council was ignoring, so it was just Shepard, their small team and the resources provided by Cerberus. What makes a leader someone that can convince people to not only follow them, but willingly give up their lives for them?

(I observe this at work as well: I would do anything for the leaders I respect, and I am also humbled by the fact that my direct reports would do anything for me. The job is just background noise, it's the people we show up for).

Mass Effect 3 had you in command of, uhm, literally the entire military forces of all major sentient races in the frigging galaxy against the Reapers? None of it felt real in any way, it's a bit like someone writing a scenario they had no idea how to write.

For example, the research that went into the Hunt for the Red October shows - dozens of hours of deep research into submarine operations, interviews with submariners and nuclear plant workers, military officers reviewing the scenarios and work, even military engineers checking the accuracy of the plot, reading a thesis on soviet mutiny.

Nothing in ME3 gave a sense of realness - how do you broker alliances between distrusting nations? Mediators, shuttle diplomacy, envoys, this is actual exciting stuff. How do military generals operate, what makes them effective, what qualities are critical for an effective general, how do they interact with the military command structure around them - also extremely exciting.

Instead we just get the same old... Shepard in the Normandy, with Joker at his side, saying "At my command, fire!". It felt like we should have gotten Shepard the diplomat and general, but we just got Shepard being Shepard.

Kind of a stupid gripe I know. I'm sure it's a great game, but somehow it didn't compel me to play it. Sorry, it happens. I bought it anyway.

Anyway, insiders seem to have leaked a pre-production trailer for Mass Effect 5 which looks pretty good.
posted by xdvesper at 4:13 AM

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Just a note about Owlcat making The Expanse Osiris Reborn game: they posted a "thank you for inspiring us" video (reddit link). It's half a minute, but more than anything else it has me excited for their first non-isometric RPG.

Bioware did so many things right and brought out so many ideas. Romancing companions, the way it works in modern RPGs with romance options, started with BG2. Dragon Age: Origin was essentially Baldur's Gate III a decade and a half before Larian made their masterpiece. They built some amazing settings and they managed to wrap up their multi game stories (Veilguard wasn't terribly good and the "secret ending" was ridiculous, but it gave us closure and explanation on the entire Dragon Age setting, Mass Effect 3, while having problems with its ending gave Shepard the right send off. And earlier Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Baal wrapped up the Baalspawn series with a nice bow, giving characters interesting endings and sending your character off, who you'd played for maybe 60 hours by then, with the option of becoming a literal god.)

I know they were working on a new Mass Effect game. But their production speed just kept dropping. I don't know why, whether it's fair to blame EA entirely (as I would like to do), whether they were just respecting their developers more and asking for less crunch, but it feels like, ultimately, the legacy of Bioware is the most important thing. For a while, it felt like all RPGs with a solid story were either Bioware or Obsidian. (Yes, Elder Scrolls and Fallout from Bethesda, but the setting and options were why I played those, not the story.)

I guess I've felt for ages that they were on their way out, this is unsurprising to me. Sad, angering, but they didn't have the credit to burn to take as long as they did between games anymore. Maybe I was just pessimistic, but after Andromeda (which I think was a far better game than they got credit for, although it cemented my belief that Bioware was better when it stayed away from open worlds) and Veilguard (which I bought for the end of the story, which was ok) that they were on borrowed time.

All that said, I hope EA crashes and burns and everyone below VP level finds amazing jobs doing amazing work while all the higher ups end up in mindless call centers. But I felt that way before this.
posted by Hactar at 5:52 AM

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A question for a game dunce who nonetheless has several EA games. If I downloaded these all onto an external drive, the EA software on my PC should be able to play these as long as the PC is viable, correct?
posted by Ber at 3:01 PM

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Fuck
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posted by UhOhChongo! at 8:23 PM

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