Summary
- BioWare founders considered taking over EA.
- That’s only if the MMO became “$2 billion a year successful”.
- Instead, EA has a CEO who thinks Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed due to lack of live-service elements.
EA has the reputation of being an evil corporate overlord in the video game industry. The company’s hard line on monetization doesn’t sit well with most of the gaming community. It didn’t help when CEO Andrew Wilson pinned the financial failure of Dragon Age: The Veilguard on the lack of live service elements, despite fans and critics being very vocal about the actual issues with it.
Related
It’s Not Looking Good For The New Mass Effect
With none of its original writers and editors, is BioWare even still BioWare?
We’ve all wondered how the company would have turned out if it were under different management – perhaps someone who actually knew about games and the development process instead of a bunch of suits. It seems that if BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic would have performed better, there might have been a possibility of this.
BioWare Founder Considered Taking Over EA “From The Inside”
Would EA have been a better company if it were run by the founders of BioWare? We can’t definitively say so, but it seems Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka did consider it. However, in an interview with My Perfect Console (thanks, PC Gamer), Zeschuk revealed that if Star Wars: The Old Republic had performed better, they might have tried to take over EA.
“I lived in Austin for two-and-a-half years making Star Wars: The Old Republic [and] I knew that was kind of a one-way trip,” said Zeschuk. “If it was super successful, super duper successful, Ray and I would have probably launched a bid to try and take over EA from the inside, being the corporate pirates that we are. But it needed to be like $2 billion a year successful. But it didn’t work out, so I was like, ‘Ah, I’m fine.'”
Of course, even if the Star Wars MMO did manage to garner that kind of success, taking over a company like EA wouldn’t have been as simple as Zeschuk makes it sound. Although, it is pretty funny, as a Star Wars fan, when you think of the creators of The Old Republic taking over an establishment and perhaps creating a new Galactic Empire.
BioWare, unfortunately, is nowhere near the powerhouse it once was during the heydays of Mass Effect And Dragon Age. To add to the Dragon Age: The Veilguard‘s disappointing performance, the developer has laid off almost half its staff in two years, including both directors and every single writer.
BioWare
- Date Founded
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February 1, 1995
- CEO
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Ray Muzyka
- Headquarters
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Edmonton, Canada