BioWare’s end is a tragically familiar tale | Opinion
By No other studio has ever equaled BioWare’s 15-year streak of brilliance. Yet far too many share the tale of the past decade – gifted groups hindered by frail, trend-chasing leadership.
Image credit: BioWare/Electronic Arts
Following five years of seemingly unending closures, cancellations, and reorganizations, and amid the tens of thousands of layoffs that the industry has faced like a ceaseless drumbeat, you might assume that we would have developed some pretty tough skin. How much can one additional piece of bad news truly affect us?
A great deal, as it turns out. Losing BioWare hurts.
It’s not the hurt of astonishment, to be precise. The rapidity with which the newly private-equity-owned Electronic Arts moved to close the studio was unforeseen, yet the result was bleakly anticipated. The fundamental rationale of a private equity acquisition is that certain financial individuals have assessed a business and concluded that they can burden it with debt, which it will repay by cutting expenses. BioWare was never likely to emerge from that process unscathed, if at all.
Honestly speaking, it’s not even a sting of unfairness, strictly speaking. The elimination of so many positions at a studio (among a total of 400 being terminated across EA) together with the cancellation of its current project will never appear just or acceptable, especially when the choices leading to it were so entirely beyond the reach of the capable individuals who now confront unemployment. However, from a broader perspective, if the axe had to fall somewhere (which it did not), you can understand why it fell here.
The first three Mass Effect games were re-released in 2021 | Image credit: BioWare/Electronic Arts
The BioWare that is extinguished this week isn’t the BioWare currently being mourned so widely. It remains a studio filled with exceptional, skilled, and passionate individuals, yet it is a studio that hasn’t produced a critical or commercial success in over a decade – the (truly outstanding) Dragon Age: Inquisition was the last burst of genuine BioWare enchantment.
