BioWare is no more.

The legendary Canadian developer, founded in Edmonton in 1995, acquired by Electronic Arts in 2007, and summarily executed by EA’s new Saudi overlords in October 2026, BioWare lived a creative life most studios can only dream of. Its (perfectly avoidable, totally inexcusable) demise is a loss not only for video games, not only for the Canadian games industry, but a loss for art.

It is also, because of course it is, yet another symptom of our ruthless late-stage capitalist era, and in all likelihood a bellwether of what is to come.

BIOWARE ORIGINS

The year is 1995. University of Alberta med students Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip, bonding over their shared love of PC gaming, decide to try their hands at their own title. Incorporating as “BioWare”, their first release is mech simulator Shattered Steel, released in 1996 to decent if unexcited reviews.

The moderate success of Shattered Steel does, however, provide BioWare with enough runway to develop their next title, 1998’s Baldur’s Gate, an isometric top-down RPG set firmly in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. While the familiar licence no doubt bolsters sales, it’s the stellar quality of this sophomore effort – the impressive graphics, the rigorous gameplay which smartly evolves from pen-and-paper RPGs – which earns it several accolades, including multiple “RPG of the Year” awards.

Yip’s departure soon after – he’s Dr. Yip today, and has no regrets about bowing out to pursue his first love of medicine – left Muzyka and Zeschuk to carry the torch, which meant expanding the enterprise and rapidly producing a string of hits, including MDK2 (1998), Baldur’s Gate II (2000), and Neverwinter Nights (2002), widely considered one of the great classical RPGs.

THE EMPIRE

BioWare’s death is, sadly, the perfect encapsulation of the dysfunctional era of entertainment in which we now live.

Market consolidation is rampant, with no one – not even the Europeans – able to rein in the rapacious corporate cannibals. In Hollywood, Disney ate Fox, Amazon ate MGM, then AT&T ate Warner which ate Discovery; in just the past year, the Trump-aligned SkyDance devoured Paramount.

The picture for gaming is arguably worse. For years, Activision and Electronic Arts competed to hoover up as many studios as possible, before Microsoft finally absorbed Activision (and Warcraft’s Blizzard) for a nauseatingly inflated figure of $68.7 Billion in 2023. Three years later, EA was itself gobbled up by an investment coalition led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and, sigh, Jared Kushner.

For those who pay attention to these sorts of things, EA’s acquisition this year set off a number of alarm bells. Amidst accusations of gamewashing, credible concerns have been raised about the fate of the many subsidiaries and franchises controlled by an already oversized gaming behemoth. (Those franchises include, deep breath, MLB, NHL, Battlefield, Apex Legends, Sims, and Bejeweled… alongside a hell of a lot more.)

What, for example, would the notoriously conservative Saudis do about the queer-friendly The Sims, from EA-owned Maxis (founded 1987, acquired by EA 1997)? Or how about BioWare and its Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises, which both embrace delightfully pansexual approaches to relationship-building? How, too, should gamers feel about our sensitive user data (already a tech sore point) falling in the hands of a government credibly accused of widespread human rights abuses?

And that’s not even getting into the monopoly of it all, the Saudi PIF folding EA into a considerable portfolio which includes controlling stakes in Scopely (most of the shitty mobile games your parents are addicted to), SNK (King of Fighters and more), and Niantic (not you, Pokémon GO!), alongside significant chunks of gaming powerhouses including Nintendo, Capcom, and Tecmo.

In many respects, the ever-expanding web of control exerted by the Saudi government brings to mind another famously all-encompassing empire, one last seen a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

KNIGHTS

The death of BioWare means the loss of the studio behind many if not most of the great Western RPGs. If Neverwinter Nights was the starting point for the capital-G Great era of BioWare, then what came next represents a run effectively unparalleled in gaming history. Between 2002-2014, BioWare gave us:

Neverwinter Nights (2002), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003 – more on that in a moment), Jade Empire (2005), followed by the Mass Effect trilogy (2007-2012, we’ll have a lot more about that in a moment), the Dragon Age trilogy (2009-2014), and even a random Sonic-branded RPG thrown in for good measure (2008’s Sonic: The Dark Brotherhood, arguably the only misfire).

After 2014, things get a bit hazier: there was a largely superfluous remaster of the Mass Effects, a now-defunct live-service (ugh) game Anthem, and two milquetoast legacyquels, 2017’s Mass Effect: Andromeda and 2024’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which would prove the final entry in the BioWare canon. (When the company was shuttered earlier this month, it was reportedly working on a new Mass Effect.)

But back to the highlights. 2003’s KOTOR, an enthralling adventure set millennia before the Lucas films – and released at the height of prequelmania – is many players’ favourite Star Wars game, if not their favourite RPG, period. Following the epic yet intimate saga of the mysterious Darth Malak and his yet-more mysterious Sith master Darth Revan, KOTOR in many ways set the template for the modern action-RPG.

Beginning with a customizable player-character (who can be male or female), KOTOR takes players on a journey across the Star Wars galaxy, visiting places familiar – Tatooine, Kashyyyk – and brand-new – the aquatic Manaan, the Death Star-like Star Forge. KOTOR’s real strength, however, is its characters. Across its thirty-hour saga, you will come to meet (and recruit) a motley crew of rogues, bounty hunters, sociopathic assassin droids, and much more. Just as interestingly, your choices throughout the game inform how those characters behave – including whether they choose to follow you into whichever one of the several endgames KOTOR you find yourself in.

KOTOR has its faults – I still don’t entirely buy its central “twist”, which raises a lot of unanswered questions – but it remains a crowning achievement in the Star Wars mythos, inspired a (not bad) sequel, and honestly did Star Wars better than anything else of that era, or, really, until Rogue One came along.

KOTOR also, just as importantly, laid the groundwork for one of gaming’s finest achievements, and easily the greatest Canadian video game(s) of all time.

SUICIDE MISSION

It’s easy to say the gaming industry of today looks nothing like that of yesteryear, but it’s worth unpacking this a bit more.

For one, game production has essentially split into two tiers: prohibitively expensive AAA titles, which must invest extraordinary financial resources in the hopes of earning extraordinary revenues (see: this November’s Grand Theft Auto VI, slated to make five billion dollars in just its first week), and microbudget indie titles, typically produced by minuscule teams with minuscule resources, and often all the more inventive for it (i.e., the recent, Toronto-set, Stuck in the Present).

Partly, this is the fault of the companies themselves, aiming bigger and bigger, wider and wider, not unlike the current superhero film bubble which is on the verge of bursting. (You heard it here first.)

Partly, it’s a function of a dysfunctional hardware market, where components were getting more expensive even before AI (ugh) and data centres (double ugh) sent prices skyrocketing. Partly, it’s because the overall price of making games has simply gone up – analyst Raph Koster estimates the cost of making a mainstream video game has increased tenfold in the last decade.

In parallel to this, market consolidation and rampant acquisition has seen the squeezing out (or squeezing dry) of smaller studios, who die ignoble deaths either because they’ve been acquired then shuttered when they didn’t meet quarterly targets, or because they tried and failed to go it alone in what used to be called the “AA” space of reasonable budgets, reasonable revenues.

The results are plain in the data: even as the gaming industry brings in more (albeit, highly concentrated) revenues for the biggest players, 2026 has also seen nearly 15,000 in layoffs (and counting), for a total of 58,000 lost gaming jobs from 2022-2026. Meanwhile, an estimated 150 studios have closed in the same period. This – as a recent Edge cover story points out – is a crisis of epic proportions, on a scale unseen since the infamous Atari/E.T. crash of 1983.

It’s also where BioWare fits in.

Back in 2007, BioWare released the first entry in its Mass Effect trilogy. Building on the morality-based system deployed to such great effect in KOTOR, this action-RPG, set in a brand-new universe, was an immediate hit. Lovingly inspired by 90s Star Trek – in particular Deep Space Nine’s “Dominion War” – Mass Effect put players in control of a space soldier (here, your gender, voice, and face are all customizable) investigating an ancient intergalactic threat alongside an ever-expanding crew of alien and human comrades.

Much of the fun in Mass Effect comes from its impressively robust choose-your-own-adventure storytelling. Here, everything from minor choices – how to answer a reporter’s question, whether to answer a reporter’s question – to major decisions – which crew member to trust, who lives or dies – can influence story beats hours or even games later, thanks to a carry-over save function which helps Mass Effect 2 and 3 remember what you did in previous entries.

It’s also what gives the trilogy its emotional heft. When, for example, Mordin Solus tells you in ME3, “Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong,” it means so much more that this is your Mordin, the one moulded by your actions, the one capable of calling back to specific moments you shared.

The trilogy, which concluded in 2012, remains a favourite amongst sci-fi geeks, gamers, and RPG aficionados. It also cost $40 million, which, while nothing to sneeze at, pales in comparison to the $100+ million spent on its successor, 2017’s poorly-received Mass Effect: Andromeda, and again another $100 million for the middling Anthem (2019). By the time the also-middling Dragon Age: Veilguard arrived in 2024, at an estimated budget of $150-200 million, BioWare was in serious trouble.

AGE OF DRAGONS

In another age, three mediocre games – all of which sold okay, but not great – wouldn’t have killed a studio. But after the post-Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) fall-off, and especially after the Saudis and Trump’s son-in-law took over, it was only a matter of time.

Which is why the fall of BioWare is also, in a sense, the fall of another company, EA itself.

It’s mostly forgotten by now (not least by EA leadership), but Electronic Arts also started with a clear artistic vision, and an enthusiast’s passion for gaming not unlike BioWare’s. Founded by ex-Apple executive Trip Hawkins in 1982, EA’s ethos – and name – were informed by a desire to recognize the artists behind the product, EA pioneering the practice of crediting a game’s development team. (Before EA, games typically did not include credits, or else omitted most of the key contributors, leading to gaming’s first easter egg.)

Hawkins left EA in the mid-1990s, and the EA we know today – once famously labelled the most hated company in the world – is largely the product of his successors. (It was, however, Hawkins, who correctly predicted that gamers would gladly shell out for quick-hit sequels, particularly in sporting franchises where each entry does little more than update team rosters.)

EA’s heel turn can be seen in how often it turned its properties into monetization engines, leading the drive for “microtransactions” (in-game purchases for extra content) which rake in extraordinary profits for what are largely cosmetic flourishes – horse armour! palette swaps! a brand new hat!

It was also EA which pioneered the “loot box” model, where players purchase randomized virtual downloads in the hopes of unlocking characters, cosmetics, or upgrades. This, in turn, led to what we now call “live-service” gaming, where profits are driven not by the original purchase, but by the seasonal passes, randomized loot boxes, and other revenue streams which combine longer-term subscriptions with FOMO one-time purchases. (The EU is currently investigating loot boxes – here’s a self-described gambling addict who spent $10,000 on microtransactions in 2017.)

The list of other grievances against EA is legion: cancelling games when they’re nearly complete (Star Wars: Battlefront III still hurts); always-online “DRM” which surveils you 24/7 and prevents offline games from loading without an Internet connection; Downloadable Content which could have been included in the base game; and, of course, the acquisition and shuttering of studios: Origin (Ultima), Maxis (SimCity, The Sims), Westwood (Command and Conquer), Black Box (Need For Speed), Pandemic (Star Wars: Battlefront), BioWare.

JADED EMPIRE

There’s so much more that can be said – we haven’t even gotten to Dragon Age (universally acclaimed) or Jade Empire (beloved by those who remember it) – but ultimately what hurts most about BioWare’s demise is whatever it meant to you, the player: who your Commander Shepard was; what your unnamed Warden did; the last words your Mordin chose to share with you.

In a just world, BioWare would return as BioWare 2.0, the sequel which remembers everything that came before – all the lessons, all the heartaches – and which evolves alongside the player. In a just world, the rough draft soundtrack for Mass Effect 5 would find itself into the completed game, salvaged from the wreckage.

Instead, all we’re left with are memories. And, perhaps no less important, the knowledge that for thirty-one too-short years, BioWare was exactly where it needed to be, telling exactly the story it needed to tell.

It had to be BioWare. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.

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For more on BioWare, check out our list of the greatest Canadian games ever made. Spoilers: there’s a BioWare release at #1.