Y’all, I dunno what to say anymore.
The thing is, this recent Kotaku article on Bioware isn’t new.
We’ve now had two games with REALLY similar atrocious launches (three, if you count Inquisition). These reports of crunch, terrible management, and overall bad business practices are consistent with the ones that come before it, anonymous sources or not, and we need to start holding Bioware accountable.
Anthem currently has abysmal drop rates, the exact opposite of what a looter shooter should have, was literally killing people’s consoles a few weeks ago, has a terrible storefront that’s insanely expensive for a $80AUD game, and comes littered with bugs to boot. There is little to no dev contact about changes they’re making or where they’re going with it, despite the promise of constant contact pre-launch.
Andromeda had facial animation you’d expect from an indie game, had bugs and glitches for days, and the fact that it had some of the worst management (arguably in the history of game development) was really, really well recorded. There are hour long videos on youtube about it. Seriously.
Inquisition, similarily, had footage of gameplay shown at PAX and similar conventions that wound up being entirely cut. Like, HUGE swaths of content were just removed without warning. It came with leagues of gamebreaking bugs (some of which are 100% still present today), had a multiplayer mode w/ lootboxes tacked on, and its’ PS3/Xbox 360 versions were just abandoned update/DLC wise.
And a lot of people have been brushing all of this off because Bioware is the company that’s made SO many of their comfort games and “We need to cut the devs some slack! These are all anonymous sources, if it’s so bad, why aren’t people with names stepping forward?!”
And I get it. Trust me, I do! Dragon Age: Origins is always, always ALWAYS gonna be my favourite game. Neverwinter Nights is such a comfort game for me it’s incredible. Mass Effect holds a special place in my heart, too.
But these claims that Bioware has dangerously terrible management & employee work conditions have been around for what is now decades. People have been suffering because Bioware can’t get their shit together for years. We cannot let this go on any longer.
The reason these people remain anonymous is so that their entire careers don’t get destroyed in an instant. It is notoriously hard to get a job in game development. There are more game devs out there than there are game dev jobs. EA and Bioware are such huge companies that without unionization, speaking out is dangerous (career wise, at least).
And, yes. Part of this is absolutely EA’s fault. But this also predates Electronic Arts all together. This is a Bioware issue.
Now, you’re probably rightfully asking: what can we do? What can we do to fix this issue? And the answer is… frankly, not much. We can raise awareness of the issue. We can contact both EA and Bioware (through their respective sites and on twitter, of course) to let them know that this isn’t on. We can stop preordering their games and wait until launch to buy them. We can support indie developers and devs speaking out about these issues.
Game Developers themselves? Y’all need to unionize. IMMEDIATELY. This isn’t a joke. Things can’t change unless y’all group together and make a stand for your rights. Much like with Telltale, companies have absolutely no right to treat you like something disposable when you put so much of your heart and soul into your products and then take all of the money and credit for themselves.
But we, as fans, need to recognize that Bioware aren’t the Good Guys we thought they were, regardless of how much they cry “but game dev is hard!” in response to this. Because, yes, game development is hard.
But you know what’s not hard? Treating people like they’re actual human beings, and not conveyor belts made for pumping out games.
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