According to Mark Darrah, 2017 marked a major turning point for BioWare, which had already been under Electronic Arts’ ownership for nine years at that time.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard delivered middling results at best (which helps explain why it landed on the PlayStation Plus Essential lineup just months after launch), and this ultimately led to another wave of layoffs at BioWare. It was the studio’s last real chance to convince anyone—after Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, that it still had potential. Mark Darrah, a veteran who worked at BioWare for more than 20 years before leaving in 2020, revealed that the studio’s downfall had in fact begun long before that.

In a sobering video posted on his YouTube channel, Darrah explains that 2017 was the year BioWare truly began to fall apart. After the Dragon Age team was twice pulled away—first to assist on Mass Effect: Andromeda, then Anthem—they were eventually told to turn Dragon Age into a live service game, a move EA later backtracked on.

“I wish that had never happened. I wish that pivot had never been made. EA said Dragon Age 4 needs to be live service, and we said we don’t know how to do that—we’d basically need to restart the project. That led to the Dragon Age leadership splitting up. It triggered massive changes in the project, the team’s structure, and the studio’s culture. At that time, Dragon Age was chasing a goal it ultimately didn’t want. And as it tried to deliver, the very nature of the game was transformed. By late 2017, almost everyone was working on Anthem, and Dragon Age was operating without most of its leadership team.

During that shift, EA and BioWare severely damaged their relationship with me and with many other senior team members. They said things that didn’t happen. They made promises that were never kept. Coming out of 2017, BioWare was no longer the same. It focused entirely on live service through Anthem, lost its Montréal studio, and emerged into a new identity. EA buys studios and digests them. Eventually, they lose their identity to the larger EA culture. I believe 2017 was the year EA finished digesting BioWare, which it had acquired back in 2008.” said Darrah.

And it’s hard to argue: EA has acquired countless studios over the years, and many—like Pandemic and Westwood—no longer exist…

Source: PCGamer