this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2026
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With BioWare dead, EA lays out its 'next chapter,' and it's pretty much as predicted: Guns and football are fine, and everything else is under the microscope (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 3 days ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] NaClKnight@piefed.zip 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

The only good news here is the return of Fight Night. There are depressingly few boxing games out there, and even fewer good ones.

I miss the days of sports leagues licensing multiple games in the same genre so that players had a choice. I don't play many sports games now but i grew up with them and my friends still play

My biggest concern is the Sims, given how female and LGBTQ+ friendly that game and its community are. That's a staple franchise for a lot off people who aren't really served by a lot of traditional gaming genres

[–] ZeroGravitas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 72 points 3 days ago (1 children)

God forbid they would do something with a story.

RIP BioWare, you will be missed.

[–] Mirshe@lemmy.world 25 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

Stories might have themes, and those themes might hurt a potential customer's feelings. Much easier (and safer for the stock price) to just not have stories and ideas anymore.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 days ago

Stories and themes might induce thinking by the consumer which is bad

[–] supersquirrel@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

hurt a potential customer’s feelings

You meant to say they might hurt the upper management's feelings because of their shitty rightwing politics they carry around like a fragile vase ready to smash and start screaming at someone for forcing them to break it.

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[–] mrmisses@lemmy.world 51 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I will never buy from EA again. Not that I can remember the last time I did...

[–] Triumph@fedia.io 12 points 3 days ago

EA hasn't been worth a shit since NHL '95 for Sega Genesis.

[–] Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 46 points 3 days ago (3 children)

EA has methodically destroyed pieces of my childhood.

[–] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What corporate business does best.

[–] supersquirrel@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

This is the best case scenario for corporate businesses, a slow gradual extraction of resources that successfully removes everything of value over a long enough time period not to have overwhelming blowback.

[–] codydodd@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Canadians need to fight for these studios getting the support our oil or car companies get. We punch way above our weight in this industry. After ripping bioware away from ea of course.

[–] ms_lane@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago

BioWare destroyed themselves.

[–] bigbangdangler@reddthat.com 25 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I hate EA as much (or more) as the next guy, but let's not pretend here: guns and football sell.

EA is not a company of gamers. They're a company of corpos. They follow the money.

Similar things have been happening in the movie industry. Why is every studio pumping out predictable rehashed trash? Because it sells.

Everyone on this largely esoteric forum is probably already voting with their wallets. We aren't the ones buying these vaccuous games, but the market is clearly there. It's much harder to fix that issue.

[–] supersquirrel@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Guns and football sells, so does Stardew Valley and Euro Truck Simulator 2.

Lots of stuff sells if you don't undermine and condescend it at every step of the way.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 days ago

So do lightsabers, Respawn has been kept alive

Mass Effect and DA also sold, until they finished Mass Effect and created a crappy spinoff. Anthem only generated hate for them since they stopped updating it real soon and now have closed the servers altogether. BioWare went from almost a game a year of pure gold to eh maybe you'll get one every 4-5 and you'll be lucky if it's any good.

[–] KaiReeve@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

It's not just that they sell, it's that their audiences aren't as discerning. The guns and football guys will always buy the next guns and football games even if it sucks, even if it's full of ads, even if it's made by child slavery. They just want to shovel shit to the shit-eaters and get paid.

[–] nosuchanon@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It sells because there’s not any other alternatives. If I go to the movies and the only things are available or some shitty rehashes what’s my alternative?

And then they wonder why not as many people are going to see movies.

[–] djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

because there are good original films? horror's been especially good for it this year, at least in the sense that the original films are making money.

[–] ElDuderino@lemmus.org 4 points 2 days ago

I feel like horror is helped by a large and dedicated fan base that still likes going out to theaters and enjoys original stories. I can't really say the same about action movie fans.

[–] nosuchanon@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Movies example was just an analogy.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I haven't bought an EA title in years. Good luck, you have a few good IPs, but there's a lot of other competition out there, and even small studios put you to shame these days. Gamers want to be entertained, not roll into a casino.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I bought The Sims 3 a few years ago on Steam.

Had to get a pirated version because the official one didn't run in Linux whilst the pirate version runs just fine.

That's the full extent of my EA purchases since about 2006 - I've pretty much been boycotting them since they released a Battlefield DLC way back that gave more powerful weapons in multiplayer to anybody with the DLC than the base game had even in base game maps (thus forcing people to buy the DLC to be competitive in Multiplayer).

In fact EA was pretty much the first games publisher in my shit list since they started enshittifying even before the rest of the AAA part of the industry.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Really? In surprised. Streams usually good about that. I don't even use windows at all.

In any event, I get it. I almost pirated resident evil requiem when I couldn't pau it on vacation because a fully offline game required an internet connection to launch 🙃

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

That's my general experience too since I moved my gaming PC to Linux about 2 years ago, both with Steam games and GoG games - very few games have problems and even fewer have unsolvable problems.

I bet the fault is in EA's DRM for that game, which was pretty bad when it came out, since Steam doesn't at all force them publishers to remove their DRM so there's going to be all kinds of evil shit in there especially in AAA games from a certain era.

I'm almost certain a GoG version of that game (if there ever was one) would work flawlessly in Linux with Wine, same as the pirated version.

[–] supersquirrel@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago

Fuck EA

[–] 87Six@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

As long as the most money comes from idiots that buy FIFA every year, and from idiots that buy microtransactions, this is what we will get.

[–] Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It sucks to lose all these companies, but it's kind of been coming for a long time, the whole gaming industry is basically resetting. Going back to millions of small companies instead of thousands or hundreds of big companies. The companies got too big and too slow. Things changed, and they couldn't keep up. Not to mention so much money wasted, or worse handed directly to CEOs or other upper management.

Despite all the big companies dying, gaming as a whole is still great. Besides having to filter out games that put AI in charge, the rest of the games nowadays are actually doing awesome innovative stuff instead of "game we liked +1". As much as I like when both exist, it's predicated on not wasting money, and ideally at least some new ideas in the sequel.

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Even the "game we liked +1" stuff is pretty good these days, since there are indie studios making spiritual successors to games with niche appeal that traditional publishers wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

Stuff like Lunacid, Gloomwood, and the entire boomer shooter genre are basically just "what if X was made without the technology limitations of the time" and it's great.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It was just "bioware" in name only anyways.

[–] Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Hehe yeah, Bioware just hits closer to home for me, as I know a few employees, and was very close to being one myself at one point. Some part of me is glad I didn't ride that rollercoaster. But it still probably would have been overall better than not riding it was.

[–] username_1@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 3 days ago

Arabia-shmarabia. EA would burn and shit everything around anyway even without SA.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

It's almost hilarious to see the steam next gongshow, juxtaposed with all these studio closures.

Someone made a comment recently in another thread about the prevalence of shitty bootleg/noname games all over the place back in the 80s, and how nintendo started putting a gold seal of authenticity on their games as a kind of quality assurance for gamers. That's what game studios are now, to some extent, for me, with the new flood of AI garbage. Killing off studios known for making quality products is a terrible strategy.

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Bioware hasn't made a quality product since Mass Effect 1 or Dragon Age: Origins - whichever came last.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Well, sure, it went to shit once they got gobbled by EA -- both ME and DAO were released so close to the acquisition by EA, that they were clearly made primarily under the old, more indie, setup. But it's still a studio that I remember fondly, generally, and would still check their new releases when they came out (even if I didn't play them).

To me they're in the same general boat as a studio like Relic. I played the early Dawn of War games quite a bit. After they got gobbled by... Sega? I think? I sorta lost touch with their games in terms of buying them/playing them, because they just didn't seem to hit the same. I think they got sold off to a venture capital group now, but it's still a company that I at least look at their games when they announce stuff. I'd put others like ID software, or even some publishers like Paradox, in this group too.

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

I mean I thought Doom 2016 and Eternal were great, but I can't disagree with anything else you've said.

[–] SplitTheUSInFour@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I mean...idc. Let them rise and fall. I'm just not interested in this kind of stuff anymore. We're still talking about how much this company sucks. I wish we wouldn't. Even the constant discussions about how bad they are do them a favor. We live in a world where all publicity is good publicity. Sometimes you forget these people even exist if you set your life up the way you want to and don't get sucked into shit.

[–] lemmyng@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

"Saudis EAt Shit."

[–] Zephorah@discuss.online 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Here’s hoping Larian steps up again with their next creation.

[–] e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Did their writing improve with BG3? I played both DOS games and while I really enjoyed the gameplay, the story was just awful.

[–] RicardoVizcaya@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

The writing improved massively.

[–] popcar2@piefed.ca 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Guns and football are fine, and everything else is under the microscope

So business as usual?

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 days ago

Well no, they had LGBT characters even in the last Dragon Age I believe. Since being gay is a capital punishment offense, obviously those games can't be made anymore.

[–] anticurrent@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

If everyone is drooling over GTA 6 as if it was the coming of the messiah, then why blame corporations for axing games that don't make money.

The majority of people are after what newest shiniest thing everyone else are talking about. And most Indy games don't make a profit or can barely recoup the expanses and pay the bills. Support the indies or stop pearl clutching

[–] MajesticTechie@feddit.uk 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

But Mass effect has guns. It was basically a Shooter

[–] DeadEndLink@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago

"Space guns are unAmarican!"

[–] aSaabD00d@lemmy.today 5 points 3 days ago

I don't really game much anymore bc of life and sadness but I just launched SWKOTOR for the first time since 2012 and forgot it was a BioWare game. Its so good.

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This is the opportunity for 2K to revive their hockey franchise and do something amazing with it. The market (and the ea hate) is ripe for it.

2K isn't a spectacular company either (hello microtransactions). But I'm just saying this is their opportunity if they were smart enough to take it.

[–] mrbigmouth502@piefed.zip 2 points 3 days ago

As a Canadian, I'd love to see that. NHL is basically our Madden or FIFA, and while I don't even like sports games all that much, I'd like to see some competition in that market.

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