We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.

Posted on October 11, 2007 by Scott Jennings| 42 Comments

EA acquires Bioware for more money than you can count.

Edit: or, apparently, more money than the media can count, either.

howmuch.jpg

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  • Eckelberry

    Good luck, Damion.

  • Baroo

    Oh wtf.

  • brent

    >:(

  • hsinclair

    I need to go drink heavily now, and mourn the death of my favorite games, sacrificed to that which is the EA bottom line.

  • 18Rabbit

    Awwwww fuck.

    It’s kind of funny in a sad way that old EA of the Commodore64 days was the BioWare of today for me. They cranked out excellent tiles that I would buy based solely on the fact that it was an EA game. I guess the good news is that Mass Effect is far enough along that EA won’t be able to screw it up before it gets out the door.

  • http://www.poopshoot.com trich

    Rest in pieces Bioware.

  • =j

    It’s bad enough that EA has sucked the life out of their own titles, now they have to go and buy other companies to spread the suck around?

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com Heartless_

    This is just too good. Why doom and gloom when we can hypothesize about Ultima Online 2 in the hands of Bioware!!!

  • Scott(Not Lum)

    I cried a little inside when I saw this.

    I wanted to work for BioWare some day.. Being Canadian and all…

  • Jadawin

    “It’s kind of funny in a sad way that old EA of the Commodore64 days was the BioWare of today for me. They cranked out excellent tiles that I would buy based solely on the fact that it was an EA game.”

    It’s funny you say this. When I read the headline I immediately said “Ohhhh fuck” out loud. My wife asked me what was wrong, and when I told her, she said “I don’t know who any of those people are.” As I collected my thoughts to try to explain to her who EA was, the old Electronic Arts logo that my friend and I used to stare at for 10 minutes while Bard’s Tale loaded on his C64 popped into my mind, and I grew even more depressed thinking about what was and what should never have been.

  • Toastrider

    Well, get ready for sixteen half-assed Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights sequels…

    –TR

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    Heh, now Damion and Gordon and Rich V. all work for EA again.

    And EA has an official Austin office again. And two different developers working on MMOs.

  • Jeremy Dalberg

    As an EA Mythic Austin employee, all I can say is, “hey! More lunchmates!”

  • Juan

    Mmm… cheaper games… and the new employee paddling clause.

  • dagnabit

    I cursed a blue storm when I saw this in my rss feed.
    So it’s official then, PC gaming is entirely dead and EA controls the shambling zombie corpse.

  • Freakazoid

    Everyone has a price, and between 620-860 million dollars for a pc gaming developer that’s been kinda ehh in the past few years is a good deal.

  • Phal

    I said the same swear words upon reading this.

    My wife had the same questions about what was wrong with me.

    And a little piece of me dies again. Lord British seriously called this one WAY ahead of his time back in Ultima 7. I weep.

  • http://mandaria.wordpress.com/ mandlar

    And another one bites the dust…..

  • http://cyberlog.wordpress.com Phil Russell

    Yep, a ballsy move indeed…

  • Boanerges

    To quote Mark Jacobs: ‘You don’t know the POWER of the dark side”.

  • http://www.CircumReality.com Mike Rozak

    It looks like EA has acquired yet another MMORPG, albeit one in the works.

    That gives them:
    - UO
    - DAOC
    - Warhammer
    - BioWare’s MMO
    - Am I missing any?

  • Scott Jennings

    > Am I missing any?

    Sims Online.

  • Sutro

    Considering their exclusivity agreements on sports games, I can see a point in the near future where the FTC will start reviewing their purchases closely.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    Earth & Beyond shipped! It was reeeeeeeaaaal!!
    So did Motor City Online, but yeah. But looking to the future, EA’s current CEO is the guy who formed the company that acquired Bioware and Pandemic in the first place, and now he’s home at EA where he used to be COO.

    Harmonix and Valve already let EA publish their games, and EA is publishing lots of cool in-house projects like Skate, and my latest GameInformer has a cover story about a “rogue team” at EA doing something called DeadSpace.

    EA might not be that evil anymore.

  • HitNRun

    Like most of these Borg-buys-pioneer acquisitions, it probably won’t even matter three years hence. Sometime down the road, a middle manager at EA will realize that he don’t really need all dem dare expensive pro-grammars on the payroll between games and will probably fire half of BioWare.

    The inevitable cause-and-effects will ensue, resulting in half of the current BioWare team recongealing under a different name. The final score will be:

    RICHER
    1) EA Officers
    2) BioWare Shareholders

    POORER
    1) Poor dumb casual gamers who will actually buy the “sequels”
    2) BioWare employees who will spend an unknown amount of time unemployed

    WORTHLESS
    1) All the properties which EA doesn’t sell back
    2) The gaming media who will unfailingly give fawning coverage to Baldur’s Gate 3: This Title For Rent

  • http://www.onlinegamers.org Rasputin

    Spam directly above me.

    I can’t wait for in-game advertising to make it into Mass Effect 2.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    I can never forget what EA did to Kesmai. They are Borg.

  • Steve

    Frack frack frack frack frack!

  • Nicademus

    I was just pondering how many formerly great titles EA has in its catalog collecting dust.

    Bards Tale only reached its full potential on the Apple IIe. C64 was for geeks and losers.

  • L’Emmerdeur

    I don’t see anything new here.

    A bunch of these people, including the top guys, will get frustrated working for the Collective and leave to found their own new shop. They will hire people and make new titles. Sometimes these titles will rock, sometimes they won’t, but that’s how innovation works.

    I’d rather be in an industry that is dynamic like this, than be an auto worker who spends 10 years unemployed waiting for his job to be recreated. There ain’t no start-ups in the auto industry.

    Also, I have a hunch that Bungie may have had a deal with Microsoft to create 3 Halos and then be spun off. This is a GREAT way to handle such deals. EA should buy these smaller shops in the same way, it would provide their shareholders with much better long-term value.

  • http://www.soakmag.com/Batman Matches Malone

    Well, trying to stay on topic, the answer to the question posed is based on how you interpret the following from the original article:

    “EA will pay up to $620 million in cash to the stockholders of VG Holding Corp. and will issue up to an additional $155 million in equity to certain employees of VG Holding Corp., which will be subject to time-based or performance-based vesting criteria. EA will also assume outstanding VG Holding Corp. stock options. In addition, EA has agreed to lend VG Holding Corp. up to $35 million through the closing of the acquisition.”

    It looks like all the amounts are correct :)

    As for is this a good or bad thing for the gaming industry, I don’t know, as I’m still trying to figure out the filmmaking industry….

  • Captain Rufus

    Apple 2s better than C64s?

    BWAHAHAHA!!

    The overpriced system that couldn’t even display colors without massive amounts of bleed even though it was usually lower rez than an Intellivision better than the mighty C64?

    Hee!

    The best version of Bard’s Tale was the C64 until the Amiga ports came out.

    Apple didn’t make a decent computer until OSX came round and even then it took a couple revisions..

    Though they kept the criminally overpriced part…

    Heck, I don’t think I have ever seen an Apple 2 computer outside of schools.

    Its ok… Commodore killed themselves with stupidity to make up for it since Captain Turtleneck Steve wasn’t there to save their asses.

    Now if only EA would implode and stop ruining gaming…

  • 18Rabbit

    I still haven’t been able to forgive EA for canceling UO2.

  • http://flickr.com/photos/57643254@N00/ Elistor

    Which UO2?

    Yeah after two sequels getting canned because they would compete with the relic that is UO… I will NEVER AGAIN allow myself any interest in something coming out of any EA studio until it’s hit the shelves and been patched twice. Personally I’m waiting to hear they’ve put Warhammer on hold, I was looking forward to it until EA bought Mythic.

  • chacmool

    Bungie used to be free, back when they made marathon and myth.. before the dark times. before the empire.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    If the most you can hate EA for is UO2 … get over it. :)

  • Kaalinn

    I see several people mentioning the probability of horrible sequels to BioWare games, however, doesn’t Wizards of the Coast have a say in that?

    I don’t know a lot about IP laws but I’m pretty sure they couldn’t do another NWN, KotOR, BG, etc. without the respective IP owners permission, right?

  • Stormwaltz

    EA’s purchase would include BioWare’s own IPs (Mass, Dragon Age, Jade Empire) and code (Eclipse and Aurora Engines, the RPG systems Mass added to Unreal 3).

    There could be no BG, NWN, or KotOR sequels without permission of the license holders for those franchises.

    The interesting question is how the games currently in production for third parties will be handled. The ME trilogy was paid for by MS, and the Sonic handheld by Sega.

  • Ardanna

    BioWare was listed as one of the top companies to work for in Alberta, if not Canada.

    EA, Canada, has many horror stories in the community here (live in Vancouver, with the EA “Campus” next door in Burnaby), I work in QA and know many refugees from EA, Canada. I have told recruiters specifically that I won’t work for them and I invariably get the “yeah, I know” response.

    I guess BioWare’s title of top employer to work for is pretty much toast now, nevermind the games etc. I feel bad for the people that work there.

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com Heartless_

    Still… holding… optimism…

    /twinge

  • IanB

    Alas poor Dragon Age, we hardly knew ye. :(

  • Alexander R.

    This is quite disturbing. I’ll follow Heather’s idea and go soak my brain in misc. alcoholic beverages.

    I guess one should not underestimate the power of the dark side/borg, which begs the question: Are YOU next?