They sold out to a private equity firm, who in turn sold them to EA.
Comment on EA: Ruin Everything
reksas@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
When they got sold to ea, this was the only possible outcome anyway. Not sure if they sold out or ea did some corporate bullshit to force them to it, but they should have stayed away from ea if they wanted to keep making games.
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 1 day ago
TeaWithDani@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Bioware also had a large number of employees in Montreal and Edmonton. Maga goons (Jared Kushner and Lourenco Goncalves) are just laying off Canadians to hurt the economy.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The founders and original lead developers - Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk - created over a dozen games before they sold the company.
Idk what else you’d want. They did their thing and then they cashed out to live their lives doing other things.
Bioware wasn’t even supposed to be a video game company. It was originally founded to pioneer medical technology and only pivoted when their side project - Shattered Steel - outperformed expectations.
Sometime people need to stop being mad because one participate Treats Train has finally ended it’s run. Be glad for the games you got, not sad because it’s over
After all, you’ve still got Larian and Paradox and Owlcat and a thousand other indie studios making equivalent games.
draeath@lemmy.sdf.org 10 hours ago
The problem is that EA will still squat on the IP for the indefinite future, so nobody gets to do anything with it later.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I mean, the IP is pretty generic.
Mass Effect isn’t the first game to use space cops and robot aliens fighting over the fate of the galaxy. The Expanse did Mass Effect’s storyline much better.
That’s before you consider how played out the Mass Effect IP already is. Just like Halo, they peaked at game 3. That was the apex of the story.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Mass Effect is a wonderfully constructed world; I disagree on you there.
I’d also argue ME3 is not the peak. The best gameplay, sure, but a more questionable campaign IMO.
You are not wrong about the story trajectory though. They wrote themselves into a corner with the Reaper arc, and that is done now. But I do think “Shepard-free, smaller story spinoffs” were the correct move, rather than trying to pick up a story that should be done (like Halo did).
MonkRome@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Paradox just added a expansion for your comment. To unlock please pay $12.99…
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
$12.99 for… another 200 hours of content? Wtf! In this economy?!
MonkRome@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
More like $12.99 for core functionality that should have been released with the game (cities skylines is the worst for this). I’m all for reasonable pricing to cover the costs of development, but chaining together a dozen expansions and making a $40 game cost an additional $160 is bonkers. Its deceptive pricing, and it shouldn’t be excused just because you like small studios making better games. It would be better to release games when they are fully ready and have a roadmap of full cost available.
Though it does look like they’ve now offered a subscription service to essentially rent the expansions for $8 a month, at least that provides choices.