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Why Electronic Arts Shut Down BioWare
(www.bloomberg.com)
The real reason?
Line must go up forever!
Just keep firing people and closing studios. . . Forever!
"We can't have two billion-dollar projects running at the same time! The only solution is to choose one and fire everyone working on the other!"
Well, that's one way to manage a company, apparently.
what is even the point of another battlefront game? how many do we need?
also if i recall correctly, bioware had some experience making star wars games. make KOTOR 3 you cowards.
Two, and they came out over 20 years ago. They were great. But realistically, even without loot boxes, another game with the Battlefront title on it that's not as good as those two old games is still going to make a ton of money.
Connections that work at Bioware Montreal confirmed the issue was with trans content in Mass Effect.
This sounds like the studios "official" excuse.
I Don't buy it.
They confirmed that trans content got pushback, not that it was the reason the studio was shut down.
Official company statements are what they want the public to hear and are often not the whole truth. In this case, I'd bet its not the truth at all.
Why the fuck would they not produce both?
Because they're so strapped for cash in servicing the debt for the leveraged buyout that they're looking for more predictable successes, as outlined in the article.
Also, to be clear, this isn't an official statement from them. It's from Schreier's sources. EA wouldn't say this officially as they have not officially acknowledged Battlefront 3.
How are leveraged buyouts even legal.
See also; McDonnell-Douglas acquiring Boeing, Skydance acquiring Paramount then WB, Private Equity in general.
The industry is in crisis from multiple angles. AI speculation is hoovering up their investment capital. Development costs are through the roof as games get more complicated and require more specialized labor. And despite some companies still spending those hundreds of millions in costs, they're finding that rarely correlates to hundreds of millions+ of revenue.
There isn't the risk tolerance to just let dev teams do whatever anymore. And Bioware's "whatever" has been three? flops in a row.
This is accurate, if Bioware were still the golden goose they would have let them do whatever representation they wanted.
Without regular wins, it's easier for executives to meddle and that's normally going to make things worse.
Another chance to tell people about "pride and accomplishment" for a third time!
Jason Schreier is usually spot on but this time I am calling BS. EA was bought out by The Saudi Wealth Fund to continue its game-washing its reputation, and Jared Kushner's firm, and several right leaning investors, and one of the first things they asked BioWare to do was remove a Pride Flag from a game for a franchise that is famously LGBTQ+ Friendly that does not expose that content unless you seek it out, and they refused. Then shortly before their game was to be announced and the teaser trailer which was finished was to be dropped, the game was cancelled and the studio closed.
Long before that happened, a studio that's supposed to be able to output a AAA game was cut down to 50 people from more than 200 after The Veilguard. The writing was really already on the wall. Also, that trailer was not meant for us; it was for EA. It was only shown to us by a former employee since it's cancelled anyway.
It was the trailer that they were going to release until the project was cancelled. You can tell by the disclaimers used on it.
Check the actual reporting coupled with the trailer. It was for internal purposes.
"Internal Trailer" means it hasn't been officially released yet, not that it was for internal use. Like I said, project and BioWare were shutdown before its intended release.
I'm not sure where you're getting that definition from, but I don't see it in your linked article. I do, however, see articles like this one defining it as for internal use.
The real reason: it was in the United States. US based studios are all shuttering because they want to move them over to the middle east where its cheap as fuck.
Canada. But even the rosiest development location probably doesn't change this decision.
BioWare was Canadian and was largely staffed by Canadians and was started by 3 doctors in Edmonton. If you are right they would have shut down Star Wars and kept BioWare.
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2026
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