Facing financial pressure, the video-game publisher chose ‘Star Wars’ over ‘Mass Effect’
Schreier adds on Bluesky:
Why did EA shut down BioWare? Twitter thinks the studio failed because it was too woke. BlueSky thinks Saudi Arabia killed the studio for being too gay. The real reason? Star Wars
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.
Another chance to tell people about “pride and accomplishment” for a third time!
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.
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.
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.
“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.
The real reason?
Line must go up forever!
what is even the point of another battlefront game? how many do we need?
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.
