Had a few in here before the thread exploded.
they didnt even sell 1.5 million, they say they "engaged 1.5 million players", thats corpo speak, they probably included demo players, refunds and game pass subcriptions in that number.
And even if it actually sold 3 million it would probably still lose money, bioware is a AAA studio with like 8 years of dev time on veilguard. the fact the estimate by EA was 3 million means they probably always knew this garbage would bomb and didnt expect to recoup their money.
If bioware doesnt shut down after this catastrophe of a shitshow i dont know what will. its literally their third flop in a row. And each one is worse than the last, i dont know how it can get worse, but im sure mass effect 5 will be somehow even more garbage
It's also more corpo speak than that.
"Veilguard" is just the product that Bioware was working on over the last ~2 years and almost certainly does not account for the years burned on the earlier Dragon Age versions (Dreadwolf and every other version from 2015). 3 million copies would not even make a dent into the other 8 years of Dev Time with 0 products.
People will say it's because of woke, or gay or whatever the fuck but let's be honest:
It's just bad writing. It's not because they're gay, or black, or whatever else
Off the top of my head:
Barrett from final fantasy, arcade Gannon from New Vegas, beloved characters.
You know what they did that this didnt? They didn't make it their entire fucking personality and above all else, they have actual writing
Barrett isn't just IM BLACK. IM OPPRESSED, WAH WAH WAH, no he's a fucking gun arm mounted badass that fights a mega corporation killing the planet
And as for arcade, a child of the enclave who never knew his father born to people trying to hide their past, you literally have to go through the effort and get a perk or go through dialog and pay attention to what he says to know he's gay ("why hasn't some lucky bachelor swept his guy off his feet yet").
That's it. When it comes to this dragon age, the horned character. I don't even know her name. I don't care. Shes literally just there to be "non-binary". Has no substance, is not interesting in the fucking slightest, most people kill her in their playthroughs the moment they get the opportunity.
These games fail, because they're shittily written and just have shit in there to hit some arbitrary quota of gayness and blackness, forgetting that they need a story to go with it.
Woke is synonymous with bad writing. It's forcing a story into a very specific and linear direction. You cannot have a "woke" story be a good story.
Barrett is black, but he isn't
actually black as we know it. There is no Africa in FF7, there's no slave trade, there's no Negro Spiritual songs and so on. He's literally just a Mr. T stand in.
Gannon gets a pass in New Vegas, but Veronica does not. The game at several points directly tries to make the point "Why can't Veronica and Christine just be together" even though the Brotherhood of Steel is in an really bad situation. In Universe - Veronica and Christine should be shunned for being gay, the BoS mainly relies on children for soldier replacements. It's only the real person writing the game story going "being gay isn't bad" and it's why the writing is bad.
The woke part of Veilguard isn't just the non-binary character. Rook can be transgender. In a game where you can be disembowled by a dragon then drink a potion (or cast a magic spell) and be 100% fine - there are character customization options for Gender Reassignment Surgery scarring. Do the Gender Reassignment surgeons in Dragon Age not use spells for patient after care? Are there no spells for gender changing? Is it easier (for 0 reason) for a mage to transform themselves into a spider instead? The game is full of incomplete ideas because of this.
Who cares lol. If you don't like it don't buy it.
As it turns out - the shareholders. And also (lol former) Bioware employees.
Insanity that EA still isn't shutting them down, Bioware must have naughty pics of Andrew Wilson or something.
To me this reads like EA did a culling and a shot across the bow. If by some miracle ME5 actually comes out it's over for them if it fails.
Nothing moves fast in the corporate world and this is no exception. You can't just close a studio in a day - it's a massive legal undertaking.
Step 1 is clearing out the trash - the DA:V game director is out, as is most of the DA:V writing staff and a whole bunch of targeted layoffs. This purging process will take some time as there are large legal requirements to how many people you can layoff or terminate at once on top of managing workloads, reporting relationships, contingencies, and so on. It's why it's mainly done in waves and I expect this to be the case for Bioware.
Step 2 is going to be trying to fix it - They're likely searching for or sourcing people to try and wrangle Bioware back into being a functional studio. There's no way the current studio head survives this but it's also not a job title that many people ever hold so it's going to take a long time to find a fit. I'd have to imagine they're looking to move someone from the Jedi Order studio as it seems to be the one studio they have that's doing actual good work.
Step 3 is (if they can't fix it) - Salvaging it. This will be shuffling around studio's release schedules and identifying ones who can work on Bioware IPs as well as finding Bioware employees who aren't dogshit and making sure they're working in a subsidiary studio. They may also opt to keep the studio "alive" and just have it be ~6 people working on some project that never happens if they decide to.
It's something that can probably take a few years, if they get all the way down to shuttering it.
