From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


I mean, we should have seen this* coming.

It's not just that Bioware has been struggling for years. Their recent
releases --Anthem, Dragon Age: Veilguard, Mass Effect: Andromeda--
haven't been particularly successful. The franchise they are (at least
on the PC side) best known for --the Baldur's Gate games-- was taken
away from them and given to Larian. And even at the heights of its
success, their games were seen as becoming disturbingly formulaic. And
those heights are long past for the studio.

But with the recent acquisition of Electronic Arts (and the company
being saddled with 20 billion dollars in debt because of it, because
reverse buyouts suck), the company has become a lot more risk-averse
and a lot less willing to produce anything but guaranteed
money-printers that can be further monetized with microtransactions.
And while you can sell horse armor and expansions for CRPGs
--Bioware's bread-n-butter-- those genres ain't got nothin' on sports
games.

So I guess it's no surprise --and arguably, no great loss-- that
Bioware is gone. If anything, we should have expected it. Still, the
studio did gift us a lot of compelling games and it seems a shame for
it to meet such an ignominious end. More, Bioware's closure is a
frightening glimpse of what nu-ElectronicArts is becoming; a company ultra-focused on the bottom line and not in the least interested in storytelling or gameplay. Even moreso than it used to be, I mean.

So I'm somewhat sad to see Bioware go, if not for the company, the
history and the developers affected, then for what it says about the
industry in the future.

So long, Bioware, and thanks for the fis^h^h^h games!






* story here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-21/electronic-arts-to-cut-400-jobs-shut-down-bioware


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:20:54 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> wrote:

So I'm somewhat sad to see Bioware go, if not for the company, the
history and the developers affected, then for what it says about the
industry in the future.

I am not really sad for them. The only games they ever produced that I
really cared about was Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. The Bioware that just
closed is not, and has not, been that Bioware in a long time.

I saw scenes from Veilguard on Youtube that were total fucking cringe.
Their death is deserved. Goodbye and good riddance.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/22/2026 6:34 AM, Mike S. wrote:

On Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:20:54 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> wrote:

So I'm somewhat sad to see Bioware go, if not for the company, the
history and the developers affected, then for what it says about the
industry in the future.

I am not really sad for them. The only games they ever produced that I
really cared about was Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. The Bioware that just
closed is not, and has not, been that Bioware in a long time.

I read that the developers that were there then, weren't there anymore.
That's a problem with game dev companies, people recognize the name, but
it's really the devs that make it great or not.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> wrote:

I mean, we should have seen this* coming.

Well, lets be honest, we all knew this day was coming from the moment it
was announced that EA was acquiring Bioware. If anything what we didn't
see coming was Bioware lasting this long. Of course, as Mike S said,
Bioware hasn't been Bioware for a long time.
--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] [email protected]
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:27:24 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

I read that the developers that were there then, weren't there anymore. >That's a problem with game dev companies, people recognize the name, but >it's really the devs that make it great or not.

Yep. Same exact thing happened to Blizzard.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:40:37 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, Mike
S. wrote:

On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:27:24 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

I read that the developers that were there then, weren't there anymore. >>That's a problem with game dev companies, people recognize the name, but >>it's really the devs that make it great or not.

Yep. Same exact thing happened to Blizzard.

I think they all ran to Obsidian or something, IIRC.

Obsidian is still (sometimes) turning out decent stuff.
--
Zag

Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe,
and to utter freely according to conscience, above
all other liberties. ~John Milton
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:20:54 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

I mean, we should have seen this* coming.

* story here >https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-21/electronic-arts-to-cut-400-jobs-shut-down-bioware

EA has been virtually nothing more than a holding company for more than a decade. It's a long way from the Archon and M.U.L.E. days.

The strategy of a holding company is downsize, pump stock, ???, PROFIT!

So, there's a lot of this coming.

<rant>
In other news, I called the Sam's Club's phone help line and got their AI agent. The female voice sounded uncanny valley creepy and disinterested
if not a little pissed, and it warned me that it may make mistakes (hallucinate).

Predictably it couldn't help me because I don't call for anything but
unusual problems. I then became 377th in line for a real person, who was probably based in India. I never found out. I'm going to the store.

Eventually, that will be staffed by robots that also can't help us.

This is the future. AI is a broken product OOTB. Fight it.
</rant>
--
Zag

Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe,
and to utter freely according to conscience, above
all other liberties. ~John Milton
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Zaghadka wrote:

On Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:20:54 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

I mean, we should have seen this* coming.

* story here
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-21/electronic-arts-to-cut-400-jobs-shut-down-bioware

EA has been virtually nothing more than a holding company for more than a decade. It's a long way from the Archon and M.U.L.E. days.

The strategy of a holding company is downsize, pump stock, ???, PROFIT!

So, there's a lot of this coming.

<rant>
In other news, I called the Sam's Club's phone help line and got their AI agent. The female voice sounded uncanny valley creepy and disinterested
if not a little pissed, and it warned me that it may make mistakes (hallucinate).

Predictably it couldn't help me because I don't call for anything but
unusual problems. I then became 377th in line for a real person, who was probably based in India. I never found out. I'm going to the store.

Eventually, that will be staffed by robots that also can't help us.

This is the future. AI is a broken product OOTB. Fight it.
</rant>

I don't have a problem with phone AI, but I have a problem with getting
back to websites & giving them my email address. More than 50% of the
time, they won't send to my address for some reason. This is to get
those confirmation activity PINs and stuff. I push the button for them
to send me the PIN & it never arrives. That's why I have to go into town tomorrow. I asked AI about it & it said it's not malicious on their
part, but I don't believe it. That's AI, forever chippy.
--
Can you strip away so we may start again?
"There’s a switch and they don't
seem authentic or themselves. It
feels like I’m an unnecessary
body and it’s a waste of time to
even be there." -- Grim, playful Blaine.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:34:44 -0400, Mike S. <[email protected]> said
this thing:

On Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:20:54 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson ><[email protected]> wrote:

So I'm somewhat sad to see Bioware go, if not for the company, the
history and the developers affected, then for what it says about the >>industry in the future.

I am not really sad for them. The only games they ever produced that I
really cared about was Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. The Bioware that just
closed is not, and has not, been that Bioware in a long time.

I saw scenes from Veilguard on Youtube that were total fucking cringe.
Their death is deserved. Goodbye and good riddance.

Like I said, it's not so much that I will be regretting the loss of
any future games from the studio. Ever since Bioware got acquired by
EA, its new games have been middling at best. A lot of this, of
course, was due to EA meddling (such as their insistence on ripping
apart the Mass Effect games to sell extra MTX/expansions, or using
their proprietary Frostbite engine even though it was ill-suited for
the sort of games Bioware liked to make). EA also wasn't that
interested in funding the big, niche titles Bioware was best at, and
mandated the company either do more with less, or forced them to add
mechanics that weren't well suited to the studio's style.

So I'm not really mourning Bioware as a studio, although I do have
some sympathy for all the developers that have lost their jobs. But
the closure is a pretty good warning sign as to EA's future
intentions. Despite the declining quality, Bioware still was one of
EA's big-guns, and yet EA was happy to dump the entire division.
Sports games, "live service" games and MTX-heavy mobile titles are
likely going to be its primary focus in the future.

The closure of Bioware is basically an announcement that EA isn't
interested in a huge segement of the PC gaming population that prefers single-player games with robust world-building.


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

But with the recent acquisition of Electronic Arts (and the company
being saddled with 20 billion dollars in debt because of it, because
reverse buyouts suck

Jared Kushner War Profiteer & the Saudis strike again

rms
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:00:33 -0500, Zaghadka <[email protected]>
wrote:

Yep. Same exact thing happened to Blizzard.

I think they all ran to Obsidian or something, IIRC.

Obsidian is still (sometimes) turning out decent stuff.

The original three founders of Blizzard did not move on to Obsidian
(as far as I know) but several others did just that.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

But with the recent acquisition of Electronic Arts (and the company
being saddled with 20 billion dollars in debt because of it, because >>reverse buyouts suck

Jared Kushner War Profiteer & the Saudis strike again

https://www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-kushner-hacked-phone-secret-negotiations

rms

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:27:24 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
said this thing:

On 10/22/2026 6:34 AM, Mike S. wrote:

On Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:20:54 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<[email protected]> wrote:

So I'm somewhat sad to see Bioware go, if not for the company, the
history and the developers affected, then for what it says about the
industry in the future.

I am not really sad for them. The only games they ever produced that I
really cared about was Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. The Bioware that just
closed is not, and has not, been that Bioware in a long time.

I read that the developers that were there then, weren't there anymore. >That's a problem with game dev companies, people recognize the name, but >it's really the devs that make it great or not.

Yeah, the primary developers (Zeschuk, Muzkya and the rest) at Bioware
fled the company as soon as they contractually could after the
sell-out to EA; it was their way of cashing out on their success. The
games started after the acquisition -- Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2,
etc.-- were noticably poorer quality. Pre-EA Bioware and Post-EA
Bioware were almost two completely different studios. Even before
their departure, you could see EA's grubby fingers over their games

(for me, the biggest sign was in "Mass Effect 2", when the game
shipped with control settings for a vehicle that wasn't available
unless you purchased the DLC).

But it wasn't until Anthem that I felt the old Bioware was truly dead.
It's not that action games were foreign to Bioware (some of their
first games were action-focused) but after spending decades focused on
CRPGs, it was obvious where their strengths lay, and despite their
best efforts their attempts at making a live-service action-shooter
was never going to be competitive... yet EA pushed them there anyway.

But odds are Bioware will be 'revived' in ten years --either by EA or
whomever they sell the name too-- sort of the way the Atari brand
lingers on. It'll be slapped on any old game developed by some no-name
studio in hopes the branding alone will rake in some sales. Nostalgia
is a powerful drug, and corporations always take advantage of its
allure.




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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Blaine <[email protected]> looked up from reading the entrails of the
porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

Zaghadka wrote:

On Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:20:54 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

I mean, we should have seen this* coming.

* story here
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-21/electronic-arts-to-cut-400-jobs-shut-down-bioware

EA has been virtually nothing more than a holding company for more than a
decade. It's a long way from the Archon and M.U.L.E. days.

The strategy of a holding company is downsize, pump stock, ???, PROFIT!

So, there's a lot of this coming.

<rant>
In other news, I called the Sam's Club's phone help line and got their AI
agent. The female voice sounded uncanny valley creepy and disinterested
if not a little pissed, and it warned me that it may make mistakes
(hallucinate).

Predictably it couldn't help me because I don't call for anything but
unusual problems. I then became 377th in line for a real person, who was
probably based in India. I never found out. I'm going to the store.

Eventually, that will be staffed by robots that also can't help us.

This is the future. AI is a broken product OOTB. Fight it.
</rant>

I don't have a problem with phone AI, but I have a problem with getting
back to websites & giving them my email address. More than 50% of the
time, they won't send to my address for some reason. This is to get
those confirmation activity PINs and stuff. I push the button for them
to send me the PIN & it never arrives. That's why I have to go into town >tomorrow. I asked AI about it & it said it's not malicious on their
part, but I don't believe it. That's AI, forever chippy.

Oh but it's true, they're not malicious, just incompetent, they just
never actually say the second half.

A learning machine, trained on reddit, what could go wrong?

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/22/2026 5:03 PM, Mike S. wrote:

On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:00:33 -0500, Zaghadka <[email protected]>
wrote:

Yep. Same exact thing happened to Blizzard.

I think they all ran to Obsidian or something, IIRC.

Obsidian is still (sometimes) turning out decent stuff.

The original three founders of Blizzard did not move on to Obsidian
(as far as I know) but several others did just that.

I was curious:

Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk left BioWare back in 2012 to pursue projects outside of traditional game development. Muzyka moved into technology, investing, and health innovation, and Zeschuk into craft beer and web
series.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/23/2026 8:43 AM, Justisaur wrote:

On 10/22/2026 5:03 PM, Mike S. wrote:

On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:00:33 -0500, Zaghadka <[email protected]>
wrote:

Yep. Same exact thing happened to Blizzard.

I think they all ran to Obsidian or something, IIRC.

Obsidian is still (sometimes) turning out decent stuff.

The original three founders of Blizzard did not move on to Obsidian
(as far as I know) but several others did just that.

I was curious:

Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk left BioWare back in 2012 to pursue projects outside of traditional game development. Muzyka moved into technology, investing, and health innovation, and Zeschuk into craft beer and web series.

Sounds like Zeschuk was the smart one.
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:28:20 -0600, "rms" <[email protected]> said
this thing:

But with the recent acquisition of Electronic Arts (and the company
being saddled with 20 billion dollars in debt because of it, because >>reverse buyouts suck

Jared Kushner War Profiteer & the Saudis strike again

In this case, Saudia Arabia both got fucked over by Jarded's
father-on-law. The purchase of EA --along with a lot of other
high-profile projects and acquisitions by the Saudia Public Investment
Fund-- all depended on the continued free flow of petro-dollars. The
general idea being to use all that wealth to slowly transform Saudi
Arabia from being a single-product (oil) nation to a country with more diversification in its industry. The purchase of EA was to give them a
leg-up in entertainment software development.

But if oil don't flow, then the money ain't there for frivilous
projects. And there have been certain actions taken by Jared's
relations that have made it harder for Saudi Arabia to get its oil to
market.

Not that I'm shedding any tears for Saudi Arabia or Kushner. But it's
made the Saudi PIF much more chary about how it distributes its
wealth, and companies like EA --which were forced to assume huge
amounts of debt through their acquisition-- are now left without the
expected funding that /might/ have gotten them past that initial hump.
So while everybody expected that there'd be cuts and changes to how EA
did business after they got bought out, the company has had to become
much more ruthless than was probably intended.


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