BioWare Is In Deep Trouble
Вставка
- Опубліковано 15 жов 2024
- This looks horrible for the future of BioWare, Dragon Age and Mass Effect.
Purchase our debut game, The Pale Beyond: bit.ly/TPB_Steam
Check out The Pale Beyond Collection: store.bellular....
Sources:
blog.bioware.c...
www.eurogamer....
venturebeat.co...
venturebeat.co...
www.cbc.ca/new...
da...
• Big Layoffs at Bioware...
da...
Bi...
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #30 ДВА В ОДНОМ [Один человек]• Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nrXy15orKhY/mqdefault.jpg)
Purchase our debut game, The Pale Beyond: bit.ly/TPB_Steam
Check out The Pale Beyond Collection: store.bellular.games
Nah.
Thank you for being one of the few journalists actually using decimated correctly.
BioWare started this symptom back with Anthem where they embezzled the development funds to solve Anthem instead into their next Dragon Age game. No one at BioWare is innocent. No one at BioWare deserves any format of sympathy. Everyone who aided in stealing funds intended for Anthem into a different game is criminally negligent. Not one of them should ever be able to get a job elsewhere in the industry and to do so is to hire someone who is willfully interested in undermining the efforts of a game studio instead of carrying the pride they want their studio to be employed by.
Where’s Matt???
It's almost like huge corporations led by moneymen are terrible at making good products. Crazy that.
"If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or a better computer - so what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people. And they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. Sort of the product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers." - Steve Jobs
@@augustday9483 Apple is the quintessential example of this
No. Activists in hiring positions are the BIGGEST killers!!!!!
A very American problem. American companies don't value good quality products and American consumers honestly don't either. It's all about short term fulfillment on both ends.
@@Mark-nh7zg That isn't really accurate, the issue lies in public ownership of corporations. Sure, it helps the economic expansion and "greases the wheels" like crazy, metaphorically speaking. But it removes the possibility to make decisions based on talent, and instead becomes all about money.
And the funny thing is, it's not possible to argue that taking losses for a short-to-medium while will lead to a win later on, without public outcry forcing it, after a company has gone public.
It's all because the people they answer to, have no interest in the products per se. They only care about milking what's there, putting the priority on stability and they never like taking risks, so to persuade them you need a really persuasive reason to get the ok for taking risks. And you can't get those kinds of reasons without either public outcry, or business projections saying that it has a reliable chance to lead to a win.
So people that can come up with the plans to increase revenue, even if it's just for the moment, will always be the ones valued more since they stand out more to the people that only cares about the money earned.
Even indie companies would fall to this pattern, if they'd grow big enough. It's only because they're small that they can follow their passions the way that they usually do.
This isn't EA murdering another studio. This is EA delivering a coup de grace to a studio they've long since poisoned to death.
As they usually do.
You forgot the stage where EA sucked them dry like a god-damned vampire before then blaming Bioware for how much blood they spilled on the carpet
Bioware have mostly themselves to blame. EA did not force them to make Anthem. They wanted to impress EA and show that they are a AAA juggernaut studio, which they never were.
@@Gungrave123EA forces them to release too soon.
@@Gungrave123 and using frostbit
Given the seniority of the people fired, it's easy to see how this happened. A bean counter in finance looked at a spreadsheet of employees by salary and decided to simply axe the employees with the highest salaries. That's the best way to ensure that Andrew will get to buy his tenth house and fifth yacht.
Or new upper management didn't like the 'attitude' (informed opinions) getting in the way of their scumminess and axed anyone who could challenge their decision-making
^ It’s both. Corporate management was tired of pushback from tenured employees/leadership and also figured they’d save a buck.
From my experience as a project control, it's usually upper management, who would make these type of decisions in their regular meetings as they scrutinize revenue, costs, project reports, and other data.
They'd tell middle management to reduce costs, and so it's up to the "user" to negotiate and tell HR which employees they would like to not extend contracts for or to lay off, among other cost cuts and project rushes.
Those meetings are a lot of fun btw /s
Given how Bioware has not made a good game in more than ten years, I would have fired more devs.
This is a rare EA W.
@@spacejunk2186 Or a big L for EA if they've managed to fire the wrong people. It doesn't matter how talented someone is if their boss gives them terrible instructions. There is, or at least was, some real talent at Bioware. But if that talent isn't given the creative freedom they need to make good products, then that talent is wasted. In all honesty, this could end up being a big W for the people who were fired, if they can find a studio that appreciates their talent and allows them to actually put it to use.
By "preserve the health of the studio and better enable us to do what we do best" they of course mean "preserve the health of Andrew Wilson's bank account and better enable us to run IPs into the ground". Gotcha.
Its not always the case the company i work for gets big projects and you usually wanna overhire before it gets going. With them switching dragon age from live service to singleplayer game could lead to layoffs.
EA killing off yet another game studio is not a surprise to anyone
The only surprise is that they took this long.
Saying that like Bioware hasn't been a corpse since ME3.
They’re not making anything special either, it’s for the best
I'll still never forgive them for what they did to Visceral Studios.
This one hurts in particular for me. I live in Edmonton and I was in high school during Bioware's Golden Age. Seeing what used to be such an amazing studio so close to home being destroyed is a crappy feeling.
Executives aren't happy with their bonuses, they have to steal it from their employees.
If gamers don't like/buy the games a company is making, they shouldn't make more of them.
How much money has BioWare made in the past decade
Bioware needed layoffs, they haven't released a good game in 10 years.
They haven't written a great game since mass effect 2.
The execs aren't forcing them to write shitty stories and dialogue.
@@ericl1421 They are if they keep rushing them to release products before they're ready
As disappointing as it is, the only thing surprising about Bioware's state is how long it took for it to happen. It's just a matter of time where EA is involved.
BioWare is like Blizzard at this point, an irrelevant studio that has popular franchises that their masters (EA and Activision) are exploiting for money and nostalgia.
Let the past die.
Seriously
well, now is not Activision Blizzard, is Microsoft Activision Blizzard, with 2 thicks before Blizz. That´s why Blizz games sucks now.
@@kashad They sucked before Microsoft, we have yet to see how they suck in the first year now with Microsoft...
gamers need to learn to be as cutthroat as the companies they buy from. no fun, no play. bad value, bad review.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx That's why we should all avoid games from EA/Ubisoft/Activision-Blizzard/Bungie. They charge to much for garbage they deliver.
Yes, surprising how easy it is to forget that a company called BioWare made the original Baldur's Gates, Neverwinter Nights, and yes even Dragon Age: Origins which was still a bloody good classic BioWare game.
DAO was BW's last good game. Soon as EA bought them right before the game launched I knew it was curtains for their studio.
@@TheRealCaptainLavender Yeah, DAO was their last good game. Everything after that was lackluster at best.
@@DrakkarCalethiel a case could be made for Mass Effect 2. But that came out only a few months after DA:O.
@@seanwilliams7655 ME2 launched shortly afterwards? Been so long that I completely forgot about that. Rephrase my previous comment to everything after ME2. That game was truly awesome.
@@TheRealCaptainLavender I still had fun with all the Mass Effect games, even 3, and Dragon Age 2 as well, despite the flaws
17:40 "a decade of Bioware... has been utterly wasted by the completely moronic decisions of management"--it is like a theme of all AAA game studios now. Some guiding principle they all have.
It's not all the studios fault. In fact in most cases it's because of shareholders demanding ever more profits and enforcing arbitrary deadlines
@@Malacite who decided to make the studio public and therefore opening the door to clueless shareholders? Larian is doing fine and they are privately owned still. Everyone else is getting turbo ass-blasted
@@Malacite Often, it's not really the shareholders (most don't even have a voice in the board, or if they have is a small one). It's the executives that want giant bonuses every year by showing ever-increasing profits. This is impossible, of course, but the fact is that when the company crashes, these 'Daddy's Boys' will merely get a massive Golden Parachute in the range of the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, to 'compensate' them for having basically destroyed the company.
It basically goes like this:
Normal person from a normal family that had to apply or be headhunted for the job: "Do a good job or you get fired!"
Executive from a wealthy family that got his position because Daddy put in some words with his friends: "Oh, you made many awful decisions and caused the company horrendous losses? Here's 50 million dollars as a compensation so you can move to another high-paying job on another company that you will trash too".
Fact is, the wealthy face literally ZERO consequences for their decisions and NEVER suffer any problems in life.
@@Malacite i like to shit on EA just as much as the next guy but they gave bioware seven fucking years for anthem. EA even gave them more time...twice. they still fucked it up. this is 90% on bioware.
@@Malacitewe have not one but 2 Jason Schrier reports on Andromeda and Anthem to show that Bioware shot themselves in the foot. After DA:I, they got a lot of the team that ended up with the frostbite experience poached, but it was because Bioware explicitly told them they could take the hit and could shift those assets because they didnt know what the hell Anthem was going to be.
Most of it is on Bioware, EA has a bad track record but this one aint on them
Just makes me all the more grateful that Larian exists today and was able to deliver the kind of RPG that Bioware was once celebrated for creating.
Moment it gets sold to a publicly traded corporation that will end. It's extremely unlikely that something like a BG3 can come from a studio that isn't a privately held company without profit as an overriding priority.
@@BasilAbdef Profit is an overriding goal for all companies, the difference is simply that a studio like Larian believes delivering a finished and good product that the people working on it are passionate about will net them said profit.
Where as tripleA studios tend to choose to route of minimum and quick work and maximized profit which results in mixed results, sometimes good games come out, a lot of average and often broken shite in need of massuve first day patches. And you will end up with a load of DLC's and other shit blocking parts of the game behind a paywall.
@@hurhursjarf4527 Larian is clearly not efficiently maximizing profits. If they weren't a privately held company, a strong argument could be made that its executive team is violating its duties to the owners (the shareholders). The only real way they could defend themselves is by saying that they plan to convert their current customer goodwill into even more money later.
The "pay once to receive completed product" model is outdated and clearly is not the best way to maximize profit. The quality of the product is of only secondary or tertiary importance. Gamers worldwide have and continue to speak with their wallets and what they say speaks volumes: the typical anime style gacha casino mobile game will earn far more than a BG3 single player game ever will.
@@BasilAbdef we will only need to worry about them selling if they make a game that flops bad.
Ironically enough Larian's writing still doesn't hold up to the writing of old bioware. Especially when comparing BG2 and BG3.
Lucky Owlcat and few new companies are holding the legacy of crpg bioware.
Bioware hasn't really been Bioware for 10 years.
pretty much everyone responsible for the good early games have quit/layed off since then it really is just a empty shell
@@aphexinc yeah its basically like Rockstar now
@@aphexinc
They all quit after 2012 when they released Mass Effect 3. Since then the studio made nothing but garbage.
You could argue that the og bioware died long ago before Mass Effect
Bioware: "...create exceptional story-driven single-player experiences filled with vast worlds and rich characters..."
Bioware: *fires Mary Kirby*
Bioware hasn't made an exceptional story-driven single-player game since before the majority of their current employees were born.
@@blshouseyour so right! Been a fan since Kotor launched on OG Xbox. They started going down hill with DA2. SWTOR started fading away within six months of launch and they tried to milk nostalgia even then with saying it was like having 8-10 kotor games. 😂
Like people act like a company is a person and it's products aren't actually the work of very specific employees at said companies. Past EA execs made bad calls and current EA execs see bioware for what it is without the nostalgia goggles.
20%? I would say it's been 100% gone for over a decade. 😅
Bioware games are all about to be compared to Baldur's Gate 3. Anyone wanna take bets that Bioware crams a bunch of microtransactions and anti-consumer practices into their product?
There is no room for modern Bioware in a post-BG3 world...
its ironic that the studio that originally made baldurs gate is dieing as baldurs gate 3 is a massive success...made by a different dev
of course it's going to have microtransactions and stuff
@@nicolasgonzalez629there will be no microtransactions at all, macrotransactions will be there in abundent
what Bioware games btw. Last Bioware game was ME3, everything else was a nuclear bomb
AT this point i'm just curious to see the disaster that will be Dreadwolf, if it ever release.
Wokewolf
It'll be fine. Like, 15 bucks fine.
@@speedingoffence wow 15 whole bucks
"If it ever releases" is pretty accurate, tbh and if it does its going to be a hot mess.
$69.99, futuristic 1980s techno-glow 'magicky glyph' Overwatch2 Tevinter with a few sidequests to push a payload and a female heroine that looks like a man.
At this point it's Bioware in name only.
If it wasn't when Zeschuk and Muzyka cashed out, then it looks like it is now.
BINO
Just like Blizzard. They both just parasites wearing the skins of the host like Edgar from MiB2
Effectively, isn't Bioware, like Relic, called Bioware in name only now?
yes everyone worth anything has left after ME2
EA: "Single-player is dead!"
*releases Anthem."
Us: Nobody liked that.
Other studios: Hey, we have single-player!
*massive successes*
Us: We're gonna go over here."
EA: Okay, lesson learned! Here's some single-player!
*success."
Also EA, *starts killing the studio that made the best single-player games.*
Us: "How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?!?"
I would be willing to bet money that a large portion of the reasoning behind this decision has been either:
1. They simply dont want to pay the BioWare devs as much as they should and the senior experienced staff is the easiest way to remove "over paid" devs, in EAs eyes
2. The experienced Devs are more likely to push back against upper mgmt about design decisions
3. By laying off the senior staff it sends a message to the rest of them to stay in line or be next on the chopping block.
4. The people at bioware are incompetent clowns who deserved to get fired 10 years ago.
Bioware isn't worth the money they pay now! They have been putting out garbage for over a decade but EA and players made excuses because of past glories by people that haven't worked there in years. Didn't the founders leave in 2011/2012?
They shouldn't pay bioware devs anything and give em all pink slips. They suck at their job. Larian is the new bioware and isn't trying to milk nostalgia. EA rightly rewards Respawn, they make good products.
😂 Zombie bioware hasn't been good in over a decade. People just don't wanna let go and put the old dog down.
I lived in Edmonton, and BioWare is the biggest developer in all of Alberta. However, every time I’ve spoken to them at fan events it was like watching a shell of development team. Their was no passion and their was no drive. Unfortunately the studio was long dead before the recent catastrophes only now can people see the full extent of the damage.
That's really saddening to hear ): oh to have an alternate world where BioWare never lost its magic touch and weren't bought by EA and we'd have still gotten more DA:O-caliber games.
Layoffs make sense in certain cases. What I take issue with is when executives take massive bonuses at the same time as massive layoffs.
but they are saving the company so much money, they surely deserve a raise
R.I.P. Good old Bioware will never be forgotten.
BG1+2 left an indelible imprint on my young gamer's mind back then. I
Currently playing BG3 and feeling some of that "Bioware of old" nostalgia.
At least I'm glad Larian could make this franchise justice.
Bioware is still alive??? I didnt see that coming
They've been a zombie studio since ME3, "living" in borrowed time. EA may finally pull the plug after DA4.
It was pretty much dead when they made Anthem, and it's even more dead when they were developing Dreadwolf. Since Dreadwolf had like 3-4 rework during its development and it being in development-Hell. Which itself is a redflag.
They used to made space game Now they are dead. They should hangover and enjoy (dead space) before shutting down
@@Paradox-es3bl Completely forgot that DA4 is a thing in dev. It will be an absolute shitshow.
I still can't believe they survived Anthem. I'm pretty confident that Dread Wolf will be a disaster.
I'll be honest, I thought this company went bankrupt after Mass Andromeda
DID YA FORGET ABOUT ANTHEM?
@@clxwncrxwnDid anyone NOT forget about Anthem?
That was a different Bioware studio. They got shut down. It was their first game too. Which wasn't that bad imo, probably just wasn't finished.
@@OryxAU As someone who put 70 something hours in the game. It was bad. Even with a lot of the fixes.
@@OryxAUThey were supposedly responsible for making Citadel DLC for ME3. I can certainly see it - over the top humor and sexual innuendos.
TBF, if you don't gut studios who fail, you will have some abominations like 343 industry who was allowed to fail again and again and again.
And yet they fail again. And again anyway.
Depends on what part of the studios is failing. You don't need to gut the workforce if management is failing.
@@halofreak1990exactly, you only ever see the lower ranks getting fired. The execs are sitting there at the top comfortably without ever needing to fear the chopping block themselves.
@@marajango I honestly believe that this is one of those things taught in modern Business Courses, Module 1:2, 2:2 and 3:2 Abrogation of Responsibility. I once asked somebody how much Ethics was taught on a Business School Degree Course, the answer was 12 hours in the first year.
@@Para2normalit doesn’t need to be taught. They’re captured by a myopic view of self preservation. We live in a time where CEOs and lower level executives can totally fuck up and fail and they give themselves golden parachutes on the way out. As long as they get theirs, good luck everybody else.
Can’t imagine in what state the studio would be if they hadn’t released the Mass Effect Legendary Edition or if it wasn’t as successful as it ended up being after the catastrophic failure that was Anthem. Dragon Age: Dreadwolf needs to be a sure hit if the studio’s to keep the lights on. Really hope it is, because I’m a huge fan of Mass Effect and really hope that they’re able to properly develop and release their already announced sequel for the franchise. Kind of ironic that they’re going through this turmoil while Baldur’s Gate 3 is enjoying so much unprecedented success, a sequel to a game that BioWare itself developed nearly 20 years ago.
Bioware games were what I grew up on, especially the Mass Effect trilogy. I remember buying the delux edition and staying up for two days straight when ME3 released. Ending sucked, but that's old news. I live in Edmonton and talked to a few of the devs about it, EA forced them into that crappy generic ending for time, budgeting, and other corporate B.S. reasons.
EA finally kills ANOTHER studio. I hate EA.
I disagree here, I think Anthem in itself was an amazing experience, the multiplayer was hella fun, the trialers not being exactly how the the game is and a few misses on marketing sure sure but few other games did that and recovered and even had sequel. No, that game was really good and its audience was not the mass effect but the diablo kind. It is a huge misconception to assume anthem was bad due to financial failure. There is still no other game like it nor has there in the past. Ea just had to approve continued development on it but they got cold feet. The biggest breaker for anthem was the power scale system. It was not good and feeling powerful against the enemies was a huge struggle to achieve because they multiplied power from gear and then divided it by like 7 or something. This was the real problem. This dynamic scale to make enemies always feel relevant is not what players want and even diablo 4 struggles from this now and is also getting bad press. There are a couple of these. Remnant 2 has this permanent scale to player too and it also sucks 🤷🏻🤦🏻♂️
I also enjoyed andromeda and want that to get a sequel. Bloody good time that game. I dont sit on nostalgia d, im fully capable of not having shepherd in my mass effect and still enjoy it.
@@zerooskil7161😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 a lot of BS there mate.
I wouldn't hold my breath for dragon age 4 considering it was described as "anthem with dragons" by the studio combined with the leaks a few months back.
I hope that BioWare is finally killed and the employees can be finally set free. Hopefully a company can pick them all up put them in a room together and let them work their magic. I really hope Larian manages to sang them and have them start working on another RPG that's on the scale of Divinty Original Sin 1,2, and Baulders Gate 3. Imagine how much more amazing the stories and characters would be with OG BioWare creative writers.
who would've thought that "bioware magic" involved a disappearing act?!
I'm so tired of seeing the studio responsible for some of my favorite games (Dragon Age series) continuously getting wrecked. There's so much of a history of how things got to this point, but I can only hope that somehow DA:IV will do fine. I just don't know how this is going to go anymore.
Cheers for knowing the original meaning of decimated.
you can R.I.P Bioware, we have Larian studios now
Unfortunately, no one does story-telling better than Bioware.
If EA gave a shit about this studio they would have stopped interfering with them like a decade ago. It just kept getting worse and worse.
I remember an article saying they laid off a bunch of people to become more agile.
This sonuds like a management problem. If you can't be agile with a bunch of people, you have bad management. Not too many people.
The corporate propaganda talking point "We will do MORE with LESS" which of course defies all logic and is absolutely false.
@user-he2bs6dx3k I said it sounds like a management problem. (Well, Sonuds, but that's a proof read mishap) I never said it necessarily is.
May you rest in peace, Bioware. At least your spirit lives on in the hearts of many enthusiastic game devs who just delivered a worthy successor to your crowning achievement.
Does ANYONE else see the pattern yet? Often, very often, when a big name title is about to release, all of the sudden a bunch of creatives or even the head story writer walks off or gets fired. Interesting...
Just one word: EA
The worst thing that could have happened to Bioware.
Nope. Activists!!!
Activision would be an even worse fate
They are equivalent but EA doen't have a lot of scandals (for the moment)
Rest in peace to BioWare, Pandemic Studios, and Lucas Arts. All killed by EA.
@@grantkeller4634Don't forget about Bullfrog, Origin, and Maxis... They were a thing, once...
To complete what you were saying, you can read in the SWTOR site that about half of the development team for it at Bioware Austin (~40 people) are going to Broadsword to continue their work on SWTOR whereas the rest will be integrated into other Bioware teams.
Bioware is nothing without their best writers, and they just fired them.
imagine when EA said that "noone wants single player games".... and here we are....
This could be good, Blizzard, Bioware, and others are making space for the new companies to take thier place.
New companies shouldn't want Blizzard and Biowares place if they intend on making the games they want to make. Blizzard and Bioward are plagued with too many cooks. The devs create an idea and present it. Then they have Suits, focus groups, psychiatrists, market analysis, and lawyers all have a say on the idea and turn it into a "marketable product". Good or bad idea, you can't bring a vision to life with that many people having in put.
Except BioWare was my favorite dev of all time and made some of my favorite games and what are generally considered some of the best, such as KOTOR which is like bare minimum a top 10 Star Wars game, no matter who you ask. Many may even put it too 3 or #1. And Mass Effect and Dragon Age are both top RPG series. (Also KOTOR is considered one of the greatest RPGs ever, too, of course)
I don't really want BioWare to die to make room for a new company. I just want all the good old talent from basically the Dragon Age: Origins era to have a studio outside of EA's death grip.
If it wasn't for exclusivity, I'd say Sony would be a great publisher for them... but honestly I'm not sure if basically anyone is known as a good publisher these days lol. Valve, maybe? But I think you can basically self-publish on Steam, anyway... and idk how Valve published Half-Life Alyx on PSVR, for example... but if Valve can actually publish to consoles, I guess they'd get my vote. GabeN could probably buy what's left of BioWare. Maybe not with the ME/DA rights... but I'm sure BioWare could make something amazing without those rights, anyway. If they actually got back their old talent, free of EA.
@@Paradox-es3blBioWare is just a name. They have been dead for a while.
@@Paradox-es3bl That 'Bioware' hasn't existed for a long time now.
The best thing I see from this is all of those OG devs being freed up to join companies that actually care about their games.
It could be a good thing in the way that those talented people can now go do something else than waste their years on things that get meddled by the executives
If all your lead devs and designers leave, you're in deep trouble.
This is good, honestly.
Bioware have been a corpse for a very long time, and if this pushes the few talented people left there out to go to other studios, that's a good thing.
No great surprise, have they had a genuine hit since Mass Effect 3? Even then that was controversial
DA Inquisition was their last major success after ME3 but reports that came out after the Anthem flop showed that DAI being a success was more dumb luck then anything else
@@shakharixsaintsIt wasn't dumb luck; it was BIOWARE MAGIC!
DAI wasn't a success, they keep saying it was, but we all know better.@@shakharixsaints
@@TheRealCaptainLavender unfortunately for people like me who want them to go back to DA:O style gameplay and tone, DA:I sold more copies than any other entry in the franchise.
@@seanwilliams7655 yeah sold them at 15$ a year or more later. Not anywhere close to its release at full price
Don't feel bad. The Bioware that exists now isn't the same Bioware that made all those great games back in the day. It's a completely different company with the same name.
imagine losing your job over the 'longterm health of the studio'
They should have been shuttered after Anthem was a massive failure.
@@JimmyHopkinsOfBullworth 🤣🤣🤣
@@JimmyHopkinsOfBullworth truly "an game"
"BioWare Magic" at its finest.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
The 20% gone was the teams making games. Now you only have marketing and finances.
Imagine a timeline where EA sell the IP license for Mass Effect to Larian ...
There are a lot of franchises that could be done really well in a Larian-like game system. Mass Effect is one, Cyberpunk is another. Another CRPG style Fallout game wouldn't be remiss either. Maybe this will be the beginning of a resurgence? Hope springs eternal lol
I don't think it's necessary. There's nothing wrong with just saying the trilogy was good, and leaving the story there.
Last example of Larian's ARPG was Divinity: The Dragon Knight Saga; and while i liked it (far more than the OS series) the combat was "meh" at best.
@@speedingoffence I mean, nothing says a Mass Effect game has to follow the same characters as the trilogy. Andromeda could have been interesting if it had been done better.
@@TheVillainInGlasses Sure, but I don't think it's the world that made the ME games what they were, it was the character. A new ME game would just be some other game, and being stuck with the old lore strike me as more of a hindrance than a benefit. Plus, you know they'd have to cram in as many cameos as there were characters, and it'd get so old, so quick...
All thing come to an end ... Thank you, BioWare.
If Dreadwolf sucks, then you'd need to go back to ME2 or Inquisition to find a success (I know ME2 has some detractors - I'm not one - and Inquisition was far from being beloved by every existing DA player... But it was much better than DA2). I think the studio has been dead for a while at this point. I do hope Dreadwolf is a final hurrah, but I remain extremely skeptical about it.
@@stephensays8726Dreadwolf wont be good, no way and even if it does it will be messy and not as good as their previous titles.
It will probably be a 6 out of 10 at most.
All GOOD things come to an end.
At this rate, BioWare will live forever.
Larian needs to pick up some of these guys for their next RPG project.
I think Larian needs to change NOTHING, other than to incorporate what they learned into their next game.
there is another reason, very common, in the corporate world. Senior staff are more expensive that new hires so you fire your expensive employees to hire cheap labor. Sometimes independently of their performance.
They used some very specific language in their update. They are switching to a new business model called agile. They didn't say it but the languaged used in the post was straight out of the "SAFe Agile" book.
@bellular if you want more info let me know.
SAFE and agile do not belong in the same sentence. SAFE is waterfall with a coat of agile paint
@@nucphyschem1 I don't think you and I are talking about the same thing.
@@hamerwolf The only SAFE that I am aware of in the agile world is SAFe 6.0 that just came out. And calling it agile is truly disparaging to actual agile metrologies like scrum and xp etc
@@nucphyschem1 Yeah that's what I'm talking about. I mean maybe they're using one of those, but they are definitely using one, given the language in the blog post. If they are just now adopting it (which would make sense because previously the had relied on "BioWare Magic" to get things done), it might explain the lay offs as they try to get lean.
Man that sucks- EA is squandering so many great IP’s
Ya, but IP alone doesn't make for great games. Neither ME or DA were particularly original.
@@speedingoffence agreed, they’re squandering the talent in addition to the IP’s- all I’m trying to say is I want another ME
I have not enjoyed a Bioware game since Jade Empire so I don't bemoan their continued downturn. However, it always strikes me as downright miraculous that games get made at all, by companies that have done it several times no less. You need to have the perfect combination of artists, visionaries and "funmakers", directors and producers with a heavy hand and a cool mind, programmers and testers with the technical know how to shape arbitrary code into a cohesive gameplay experience. We went from self-destructive idea guys and ambitious programmers leading the industry to suits dominating the conversation. While people may have fond memories of the former, the latter is what secures you a position that brings more than noodles and beer as your daily meal. I wonder what a studio acts like that knows what it is and understand the industry it is in.
Anyway, back to Armored Core 6 for me.
Sadly, there aren't too many who would recognize either that title or how great it was.
Anyone ever notice that the moneypeople who force these bad decisions in companies never fire themselves when the inevitable horrific business fallout from their decisions come back to haunt them? No, just me? OK then.
they are usually long gone when that happens
@@marcogenovesi8570 Golden parachutes is the term for that. These people never face the consequences of their actions, see Ricittello and Unity for proof
BioWare, the one AAA studio I still have a sliver of hope for. Coming from a HUGE Mass Effect fan. I just want at least one more amazing roleplay journey. BioWare crafted some amazing single player RPG's when they had their own creative freedom. I fear that we're watching the studio die so very slowly with EA's poison dug in too deep to stop. Pretty much the fate of every other studio they touch.. corrupt, assimilate and repeat.
On a side note, Baldur's Gate 3 is such a gem among all this chaos. Very thankful that this game came out.
I swear, EA stands for 'Eradicate Acquisitions'. Screw that shareholder's sweatshop.
At this point is Mass effect 4 and Dreadwolf even coming out 🥲
At this point, do you even want it to? They have both gotten steadily worse everytime they put out a new one.
I hope the IP will be sold to other good company that will actually cares.
Hopefully not
True that, good point.
I wish Publishers sold IPs more often. Now-a-days it seems like they all hold onto IPs and if they need to sell anything they sell the whole dang company associated with the IPs. Like Microsofts acquisitions recently. @@kaosukun02
When BioWaste specifically writes a character to argue with me about the fact that Krem is a female woman, I tend to stop caring.
Yeah that was...yeah
Unless the staff dump is all miltiplayer people, I hardly think losing people is for the "health of the game."
Why do I feel like we are going to hear about a cancelation of all bioware games in development followed by a full studio closure in the next two years?
Mmmm could karma finally be ceatching up with the triple A industry? 🤔 hopefully
is not karma they are doing that intentionally they just care about money
Although I understand your argument, in this case your barking up the wrong tree. Still watching the news, but Bellular just said the people fired are experienced staff. Part of the staff that has been around during the good bioware times. People need to understand something; firing 50 employees that each earns around 100k-150k will not improve a company when the ceo and board of directors are earning 1M+ a year(minimum, and without accounting for retirement packages) and still choose to take the same dumb decisions . This is what scapegoating is.
For me, ‘Mass Effect’ ended after 3, and I was happy to let ‘Dragon Age’ end ambiguously with Inquisition.
I can only imagine the games we would be getting if bioware was allowed to keep making rpg's as they used to.
Why imagine? Someone already went and made Baldur's Gate 3. That's the kind of games they would have been making.
We kinda know. It's Inquisition and Andromeda. There's a desire to bring back old stories, but much like raising the dead, they're never as pretty as they once were.
The Mass Effect Trilogy, for instance, was great. What's so terrible about just putting down the paint brush and calling the story done?
So, at a time when Larian has infinite money to hire anyone they want, Bioware releases a lot of the original BG devs.
To me, this is just the timeline correcting itself.
Larian and Owlcat taking the place of BioWare
Wrath of the Righteous was horrible, it was a pretty drastic step down from Kingmaker.
@@Particle_Ghostnope
i wish it was the ea upper management who got the boot instead of the workers who actually make their products
So quick thoughts... no matter how much we might love the old devs that gave us some of our favorite things, they may just be out of juice for the market now. It may feel awful, but it's not unlikely at all.
the old devs that we love left the company years ago, it's not like they lost their talent.
Most of the old devs where gone during Anthem's development
EA was to BioWare what Activision was to Blizzard.
I don't think Blizzard needed Activision to get here. They just decided to carpool.
Oh crap, they axed Mary Kirby too? Maaaaan.... I'm starting to wonder if Dreadwolf is gonna happen at all....
It doesn’t matter if it does, man. The writing team that created the original labor of love has been long gone, and it’s hard to replace quality writers like that. Especially now, where everything is just reduced down to the lowest common denominator. I have a feeling if Dreadwolf even does release, there will be no way to truly be an evil or morally grey character, and I bet the version of “good” the game would present will just end up being hardly-veiled-at-all progressivism.
A good RPG with satisfying world-building should let a player be a tyrant, a sickeningly sweet do-gooder, a ruthless utilitarian legitimately trying to make a better world, and everything in between. You just don’t get that breadth anymore. You get stereotypical SJW, comically evil, or just plain meh characters.
@@ImPerpl3xdIf they don’t let us use blood magic in DA4 it’s over… seriously. I’ll refuse to even look at the game if they fuck this up
This is a good thing. These devs can now go make their own studio and make games that BioWare held them back from. Just like how Obsidian Entertainment was birthed from Black Isle Studios. Nature is healing.
I heard someone say EA is to development studios what Machinima was to 2010’s content creators. Sounds pretty accurate.
Great coverage. I feel like most videogame news channels would not include (or even research enough to include) details like tax credits. GG
Sad to hear those veterans losing their jobs, but i hope they can be hired by another company and still use their talents
Bioware hasn't been "Bioware" for about a decade. It's okay. We have Larian now.
i keep thinking about x getting rid of such a large portion of their employees without any real impact on the user experience. makes me wonder if maybe a lot of tech companies suffer from the same problems.
Everyone knows "decimated" means "reduced by 10%" right?
Making money should always come first. Obviously. But hey, you know a great way to do that? A happy customer base. Shocking I know.
Honestly, since Gaider and Laidlaw left in 2017 I haven't had much hope for Dreadwolf anyway, that EA are still missmanaging BioWare is not a surprise.
Man, I wish the best for people who lost their jobs.
I actually really liked Andromeda. I don't think it's a fantastic game, I don't think it's not a generic title, and I definitely don't believe it should've been called Mass Effect, but just Andromeda: A Mass Effect Story or so. However, I believe that if that game was given much-needed time to be baked a bit better, it would've been more welcome in the scene.
Bioware, therefore, has had an obvious management problem for many years, which unfortunately ended up with asking, "why would you make an online looter-shooter?" I was thrilled about Anthem because it looked really cool, until I wasn't.
Andromeda has great combat and game play in general.
It was cursed by launch issue memes, and it got abandoned with multiple unfinished story threads because all EA cared about was the multi player loot boxes.
Absolutely ironic that the same exact time Baldur's Gate 3 is breaking records in terms of player reception, sales, number of players active and critical acclaim, the studio that made Baldur's gate 1&2 is getting ripped apart.
All under the corporate propaganda talking point "We will do MORE with LESS" which of course defies all logic and is absolutely false.
Maybe larian can make a sci-fi cprg.
owlcat
Does anyone know the name of the note-taking site he's using at 13:13 ?
Honestly I have zero faith in them and it's been that way for awhile. I'm just glad Larian Studios is stepping in to fill the void of what Bioware used to be.
Apples and oranges especially on gamplay alone. Sounds as if you're overreact on Larian when they have 1 or 2 loses under their belt. In fairness for now Larian is lucky on how people aren't going after them on the bugs in BG3.
@@chris9206 Because its not Cyberpunk levels of bugs when it was released.
@@thelast749 Actually it is while Cyberpunk was a cross-gen game and wasn't in early access. Part of that warning was from the Witcher 3 and just in general on how buggy Open World RPGs have been fir decades.
@@chris9206 Thats because most of the bugs aren't that game breaking. Also Larian actually took advantage of early access hence why it wasnt as buggy on release
@@thelast749 to be honest a lot of the bugs require reloading saves and there are a large enough amount that haven't been fixed since the Early Access. Early Access started last year not this year.
Well Mass Effect is fucked. EA has a “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” mentality.
Another thing to consider as well is that they don't just lay people off like this if their position has become redundant, but also if they as an employee have become too expensive. They will let people go sometimes just so they can hire somebody for the same position, to do the same job, but for less than what they were paying the person that got terminated. We saw this happen with ActiBlizz laying off nearly 800 people a few years ago, and then trying to get some of those people to come back to their jobs, but offering them less money than they were being paid before they got canned. Video games as an industry truly is a fucking shit show.
The more AAA that go under the more opportunity for AA and indies to shine.
So it's not all bad
Then those AA/indies consolidate or get bought out and become the new AAA and the cycle continues. The point is that no studio or group can be relied upon to output good quality products repeatedly. Every good game should be treated as the last one that that developer makes.
@@BasilAbdefyeah how bout no Scott
@BasilAbdef maybe, maybe not, but either way, we shouldn't be continuing to give business to AAA until they fix their greed and scumbaggery.
Damn, Larian making a better BG3 than nuBioware ever could really hit different huh.
Bioware has somehow escaped doom for a long time . I been prepared myself that they should just be gone man . Most the people responsible for our classic games is long gone and we gotta accept that . The legendary collection is great 👍, I would love a dragon age collection especially for origins but outside of that they are a hollow dead shell of themselves. We will see with dragon age four and mass effect four but I'm not hopeful 😭
I find it so funny that EA was one of the companies that tried to shame Larian for Baldur's Gate 3. When-- Bioware made fuckinf Dragon Age Origins, something that was just as a deep and awesome as BG3.
Assuming Dreadwolf will actually be a good game at the end is like believing Starfield will not be a buggy mess at release😂
Dreadwolf will be a decent buy at 15 bucks 8 months after release. Starfield... We'll see, I guess. It just kinda looks like a higher budget No Man's Sky to me.
Yeah I have no faith that it’ll be good. What really sold the Dragon Age games were the world building, characters, and lore. All those writers are gone now, and have been for quite awhile.
Frankly the DA series never had great gameplay. It was the world and relationships that made it worth playing. I feel the same about Baldur’s Gate 3 now - I could take or leave the gameplay, it’s everything else about the game that makes it a must play.
There is no Bioware left. Not since the end of Mass Effect 3. Unlucky. Good thing that I can still replay KotOR, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Planescape Torment and Mass Effect 1-3 (minus the endings) without caring for anything that came out later.
Bg3 blows them all out of the water
That's what they get for making bad games
Thank you for using Decimated properly.
Imagine if Larian Studios took over the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises or at the least did a similar thing with baldur's gate 3 with wizards of the coast agreement.
It'll never happen but what a dream that would be.
Have my doubts that Larian would even touch any of those IPs. Larian would rather do their own thing. Plus, EA.
Dream.
Im not sure they could make the other half of a Mass Effect game, the cover based shooter part that is.
@@mup8661 Exactly, Larian has years of experience doing crpg's with their own engine, dunno why all of a sudden everyone think they could do anything. Are they the new gamer TM CD Projeckt can do no wrong circlekerk studio?
Bioware was such a reverred name 20 years ago.
I remember playing BG1 and BG2 and praising this company like no others (except maybe Blizzard).
Nowadays both these legendary names are tainted beyond belief and I'm playing the brilliant BG3 developped by a company I had never heard of five years ago.
Things change...
Healthy companies don't need to do layoffs. If they need to reduce scope they allow natural churn to do it for them. Layoffs are like cutting off your arm to lose weight.
this just isn't true. if a market takes a total shit then your income might not be able to support staff.
While this may apply to some circumstances, this is way too broad of a generalization. There are many instances where layoffs are a necessity, like it or not
Layoffs are required to companies though, to reduce fat. Since there are workers that has a type of job, and it becomes redundant within the company. They just can't afford to keep them around if they aren't doing anything. And sad to say, that's how it is.
@@Xport9 It's poor management if the company put itself in that position. Workers should be able to work and retire with a company. In better managed countries this is the norm, like Japan. Americans are just used to these poor practices so they think it's normal.
So no, this is not something a healthy company does.
only 20%? compared to which time? after mass effect 3, it did not feel like they have anyone left.