I just finished watching Austin Eruption's video on Marvel's Avengers but did watch his Anthem video when it dropped the other day.
It really, really, REALLY cannot be understated how much corporate greed completely tore into every single piece of Bioware, it's people, and it's projects. I've simmered with the Schreier article for years and with the final shutdown, I've been reminded of the sheer mismanagement it and everything else all underwent.
The franchise that devs have gone on record to say is the lesser of the two flagships, the one EA decided wasn't worth the same amount of internal support as the flashy space shooter military game was the franchise that outsold it in spite of this lack of internal support. Not even just outselling, but completely blowing any expectations out of the water for it's success. It had multiplayer with packs, it got the ever sought after casual gamer market, it even launched merchandise sales! Even though they already hobbled DAI (and DA2 if we're being honest) it still did All Of That.
But that still wasn't enough, because it didn't make as much as a fucking gacha or live service game or the laughable concept of endless money in general.
Despite them hollowing out Bioware with it's decisions, losing several key members that you know, MADE both of the flagship franchises what they are, making Bioware create in a genre they never had in the past, EA still pushed on ahead to a game that was poorly received all across the board. And despite DESPITE all of this misery, wasted money, time, people, all of that, they didn't even fucking want it in the end. They pulled the plug on something that could of saved it, or at least gave it some form of life in Anthem 2.0 because it didn't meet short-term profits, who gives a shit about long-term. Not EA!
The staggering cost of this live service game no one seemed to want vs what it ended up being is so sobering to look at then and now. And how it affected literally everything moving forward from that point. Like, really thinking the problem with their first live service game that they purposely crippled and lost so much on, was it wasn't an established IP, then oops there's no money in that now, reboot it, and we'll fire everyone for their troubles.
I sit here with all of this and just wonder how out-of-touch the suits can be, and how I wish I could say it's deeply malicious but I know it's not. It's just business. And I think that's worse.