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Legendary Game Studio Bioware Shuts Down
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M76
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It's the easiest thing ever: Demanding for a certain group to be more represented for no particular reason, not because it better serves the story or the setting just for its own sake. That is woke.
A minority group existing organically in a story in a setting where it makes sense: Not woke.
Now go on, pretend there is no difference between the two scenarios.
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So every fantasy setting must naturally be non-minority, because that's the fantasy setting's norm?
Okay, aside from the fantasy genre, let's take population into account.
The world population in 2026 is estimated to be over 8.3 billion. About 60% are Asian. About 16% are White (which includes Hispanic whites). In a world-setting, forcing a white minority group in a story would be considered woke, correct?
The world doesn't care that y'all depict Jesus as white. But depict Jesus as brown, and y'all are in tatters.
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I didn't play Veilguard as Bioware had already lost me with DA2 and DAI so I just assumed that Veilguard would be a passable game but not amazing enough to get hyped for. From what I gathered from those who've played it it had a good action-combat system and was reasonably fun to play; likely a 6 or 7 game overall. Unfortunately, it had an annoying (and pushy) character that belongs to the hate mob's current favorite people to hate so they jumped all over that bandwagon which meant that it could only be equal to something like E.T. and one of the worst games of all time.
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In the past it was, 'They're demanding that those blacks to be more represented for no particular reason, not because it better serves the story or setting just for its own sake.' "Did you see Mr Rogers put his feet in that swimming pool with a black man? They're brain washing our kids!"
Then women, then gays, then Metal heads, then D&D players, then video games are turning kids in to serial killers, then gays again, rinse and repeat.
The only difference between then and now is that the pearl clutching has been labeled WOKE so that there's a way to market it.
M76
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As I've said pretending. At least I hope you're pretending, because the alternative is worse.
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Lol, always bringing politics into it. Woke is politically Democrat (I dislike most Democrats). Anti-woke is politically Republican (I dislike most Republicans). Just because we don't agree with you, you have to put us in a "category" that's worse? Seriously, WTF is wrong with you?
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Typical response from an anti-free speech commie.
You are deliberately missing the point. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters have been in Mass Effect almost from the beginning. (Gay was cut from the original game, but you can access the dialog etc. through save file editing), and Liara is bisexual or rather playersexual would be more accurate. In any case, you can have characters of varying sexualities in games and not have the game automatically be woke. It's characters who's gender identity, politics and sexual orientation are their entire personality that it becomes an issue. See how Veilguard handled things compared to ME3 and its a night and day difference.
If the characters are well done, then its not generally a problem. However, there is a tendency in modern media to over represent groups that make up the smallest fraction of the population. Not everything needs to be as diverse as downtown Los Angeles in 2026.
DukenukemX
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Did you know Elden Ring is woke? Have you seen what the antagonist is? Literally a person who is both a man and a women who have sex with themselves and produce children. Not only that, but have sex with other people and produce children. The whole game is helping out the female half as it can't control the male half who is dedicated to the Holy Erdtree. Elden Ring DLC is about a half brother who really wants to bang his half brother, to the point where he resurrects his half brother and puts his soul into another dudes body and mind controls him to love him. Game is 10 out of 10. Elden Ring story is trash but it doesn't matter because I get to fight some messed up looking bosses.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, but wokeness can affect game sales if the game is mediocre, which is like 99% of games ever made. If you want to avoid scrutiny then include a boob slider along with the woke. Nobody is going to care if you have woke if you also have a boob slider.
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No, I'm deliberately getting the point. If LGBTQ+ isn't an issue of being woke, then having more would still not be then, considered woke.
There are people in these forums, where their gender identity, politics, and sexual orientation ARE their entire personality, and it's definitely not LGBTQ+. If that's the definition of woke, then there's woke for the LGBTQ+, then there's also woke for the non-LGBTQ+ that are anti-woke woke.
Those of us on the sidelines are just grinning and shaking our heads.
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M76
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You said put more LGBT into everything without even knowing the setting. That by definition can not be in service of the story or setting.
Fantasy is based on medieval Europe. And medieval Europe was predominantly white. You can dislike that, but saying there are too many whites in a fantasy setting, is just as racist as saying there are too many Asians in a feudal Japan setting.
This is another core tenet of wokism, demanding that all fiction reflect the current day bubble they live in.
Woke is a predominantly anti-white ideology, so it doesn't make sense to describe putting a white person where he doesn't belong as woke.
Since travel is virtually unrestricted in a current day setting, it is completely conceivable to have any group of people present in any part of the world. But if the story took place in central Africa and half the bystanders in it would be depicted as white it would be just as stupid as depicting half the population as black in a medieval fantasy setting. Of course the former never happens, and I'm not saying it should ever happen.
To me Jesus as described by the new testament is a fictional character in a fictional book. There might have been a real world person called Jesus going around performing magic tricks around the time when he supposed to have lived. But in the established lore he is white, the only reason to depict him differently now, and go against all previous depictions is motivated by anti-white racism.
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WOKE is when its contrived and not organic to a plot line to check the inclusive check boxes. A good example is THE EXPANSE series, it had some gay shit but it never felt contrived. While there are examples when gay shit was added to the woke check boxes, examples is Star Wars lesbian kiss and gay Sulu in Star Trek Beyond, even George Takei thought that was dumb.
The audience is smart and don't like contrived shit, its as artificial as AI slop.
The audience is smart and don't like contrived shit, its as artificial as AI slop.
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M76
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You swing and miss again. Just as with religion, I'm not even American, I have no stake in the democrat vs republican fight. I don't know how you jumped to party politics? The alternative simply means that genuinely not getting the difference is a worse look than pretending to not get it.
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Ahh, so woke is LGBTQ+ as being the issue, or a certain amount. Finally, we got it sorted out.
Finally, it's a white thing. Gotcha. While in actuality, everything is drawn upon Iranian, Arabian, Indian, and Chinese mythologies and stories, not just Greco-Roman mythologies. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata, One Thousand and One Nights, etc. Dragons were also a Chinese thing, converted from Chinoiserie back in the 17th Century.
Anti-white? So the blue-haired white woman being woke is... mind blown. See, I knew you would eventually come out of the woodwork. Woke is anti-white... so when did anti-white wokeness happen? Was it always the case, or did it suddenly happen in 2015.
So, white-washing isn't woke, right? Taking, say, non-white characters from a non-white story, and putting a white character in as the main character, as well as supporting characters, but putting it in a non-white setting where most of the inhabitants are not white?
Depicting Jesus as non-white is anti-white racism.
Thank you, you made my day.
So are you making a game or are you making a social commentary or propaganda piece? That is what separates a movie or game from just having minority representation and being woke, it is how obnoxiously preachy it is. Nobody likes to be preached to, especially on a matter that they do not personally believe in. A game has a gay or trans character? So fucking what. One may not agree with the said character but thats life, stable person moves on and continues with his life without making a fuss about a matter that doesn't involve him. Thats also part of the diversity by the way, not all people think alike. But if it starts to rub the matter on our faces and especially in the most stupid way possible that makes no sense? Now you are forcibly involving the person on the message you are sending and thats when the questions and woke accusations arise when they are in conflict with the receiving end. Baldurs Gate 3 understood this and didn't preach despite being technicallywoke AF, Veilguard did not.
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All good stories are a social commentaries, just not all social commentaries are good stories. Woke is just a social commentary that people of a particular... persuasion, do not like. The social commentary on both sides are whiny and preachy. The problem is that the anti-woke haven't come up with a consensus with what woke is, yet, let alone good woke, bad woke, or woke that's okay.
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Are we talking baseball or cricket? Oh, no, it doesn't matter, does it? Where did woke originate? I'll answer for you. America. The anti-woke complain that it's politically motivated, so there you go, I brought you up to speed. You're welcome.
Having LGBTQ+ characters doesn't itself constitute woke. There's a marked difference between having a character that's gay, and having to sit through a lecture on non-binary they/them pronouns like in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Woke developers focus on "the message" first, and the story second. That's why those games are poorly received. The characters created by these teams tend to be wooden and boring because the important thing to the developer is representation of the identity, not whether or not the character connects with the player.
The vast majority of gamers couldn't care less about "representation" in any case, and the people who do care about "representation" tend not to be gamers anyway, so you have to make a business decision and decide who your audience is. A case in point is Battlefield 2042, where the developers went out of their way to highlight that one of their "specialists" was the first non-binary they/them FPS character. Battlefield players have never wanted that. They wanted to be a nameless soldier representing anyone that could be on the battlefield. The developers weren't giving the player what they wanted, and then claimed the player rejected it because they were bigots because of course that could be the only reason for backlash, and then wondered why the game didn't sell well.
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Yeah, case in point.
Not only that, it literally says in the screenshot you can turn off all of the woke stuff if you don't want it. So they gave the player the choice, and no one complained. The five players that desperately wanted to set their pronouns as "they/them" were satisfied, and everyone else was satisfied, because they didn't have to sit through a lecture about it like they did in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
No one said that. The guy you're responding to didn't say that. As a matter of fact, he said the opposite of that. Respectfully, I'm not quite sure who you're arguing with.
DukenukemX
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Baldurs Gate 3 absolutely did preach being woke AF to the point where you save a lesbian couple because daddy who is voiced by J. K. Simmons wasn't having any of that. Not to mention everyone is bisexual and it doesn't matter what gender you are, because they all want to rock your world. The only difference is that BG3 doesn't make this a core issue throughout the game, and the gay vampire is the right amount of the gay stereotype. Reminds me of Whis from Dragon Ball Super.
Compare that to Dragon Age Veilguard where you sit down and get lectured on this one person being none binary. It's like I'm going to a required meeting because I said "go woke go broke" and to not get fired from my job I need to attend this seminar. In Baldur's gate 3 I can kill almost anyone in my party if I want to. I remember there being a sacrificial alter that if you sacrifice someone then you get a boost in stats. The problem is when people mod the game to remove the parts they don't like, and the mod gets banned. That's pushing an agenda. Nexus Mods doesn't shy aware from sexy mods but remove some woke and the mod gets banned.
View: https://youtu.be/8fm_ZHFWasI?si=QPC-pnNcZu_2SMCS
America is big into identity politics. To be honest, I'm not a fan of the word woke because in how it got used to trick people into voting for a certain someone. That's how bad the woke got when it was used to push Americans to vote a certain way. It was too effective honestly.
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Gideon
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Them being bisexual was a player choice. It allowed you to play male or female as your player character and allow you to romance whoever you wanted. It was their so people didn't whine about not being able to romance a certain character. That is not woke, but simply giving the player options and you had to choose the dialog option to keep them going.
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This. I hate the party that pushed woke, and I hate the party that pushed anti-woke woke. Both push their own brand of identity politics, and they don't realize they're both stupidly woke. They both even stole that term, which originally meant you "woke up" to the lies of the world.
I'll spell it out for you:
Him:
M76 said:
It's the easiest thing ever: Demanding for a certain group to be more represented for no particular reason, not because it better serves the story or the setting just for its own sake. That is woke.
A minority group existing organically in a story in a setting where it makes sense: Not woke.
You:
El_Capitan said:
So every fantasy setting must naturally be non-minority, because that's the fantasy setting's norm?
If you're setting a game in medieval Europe, you'd expect the vast majority of people, 99% or so, to look European. At the time, any "visible minorities" would have likely been traders coming from a completely different region of the world, because you couldn't hop on a plane and be in a completely different area of the planet in a few hours like you can today. He never said every fantasy setting must naturally be non-minority. Read what he said again. You're saying that he said that because you want to argue the point you're trying to make. He specifically says "A minority group existing organically in a story in a setting where it makes sense: Not woke.". I'm really not sure how you turn around and say "So every fantasy setting must naturally be non-minority, because that's the fantasy setting's norm?" in response to that.
sharknice
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I remember one of my friends complaining about how he wanted to get all the achievements so had had to romance a dude, lmfao.
It wasn't that long before that he was complaining about people complaining about games being woke just because they have ugly women in them.
It wasn't that long before that he was complaining about people complaining about games being woke just because they have ugly women in them.
Flogger23m
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I mean you can make a fantasy game set in Asia where I would expect everyone to be Asian. But Asian fantasy and European fantasy had some differences in style, and I'm not just talking about the eye shape of the characters. You can even have one set in Africa drawing from African culture, and if there is enough of a market it might do good. Africa is growing economically so maybe that might be viable in the future.
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Thedas is inspired by Medieval Europe, but it's a FANTASY GAME with dragons, demons, ghouls, and plenty of other creatures... yet, you're hung up on the skin color, gender, and sexual orientation of humanoids in the game. Gotcha.
The studios that are being killed are profitable. If you're going to talk about eyes an ears then you should probably understand at least that much.
Way more than just Ninja Theory, but they commented on their financial situation they were not broke or failing. Tango Gameworks, Westwood Studios, Battlefield Studios (which is insanely profitable still underwent huge layoffs), there's tons of them.
Err you don't have salaries to pay for. The fact that their solvent is the problem. That's why other developers are pissed.
They kill studios that are not profitable. The problem is that they are killing studios that ARE.
Nope you can look at their sales and see they weren't in financial trouble. Anthem sold 5 million copies that's not a failure.
This comment makes no sense.
Again look up profitable.
This is less about sexuality but regarding race. Good fantasy is consistent and make sense enough that the reader/gamer/watcher can suspend their disbelief. So lets say we have a dark skinned person. Where did he come from? Is he a recent arrival? A merchant from far away land? His existence makes sense and nobody has a problem with it. But random dark skinned people here and there that apparently have been there forever as good as natives? What is their gene pool that their skin complexion has stayed intact, have they been marrying their cousins all this time? I probably do not tell you how absurd this idea is. The alternative is that their genes would have blended into the majority over the time and practically disappeared. The only way their shape and color would stayed intact is if there was a MASSIVE group of people moving (or moved) in, large enough that their genes can sustain themselves. Case in point, USA. They brought in such a massive amount of black people as slaves that they formed their own ethnic group in the country that live to this day. Unlike Vikings who also dealt with slaves but it was all mixed, blacks, middle easterns, red headed Irish, their traces all disappeared over time.
Again, consistency and logic is important. This is why Tolkien with his Middle Earth is so legendary. Despite all the out there fantastical elements, he thought of almost everything and made it tick.
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The argument is "it's woke, therefore it's trash". We know that's not true. There's also tons of media that's not woke, that's also trash. Neither of us are in charge of making movies or games. I'm pretty sure we'd all have our differences of opinions. The Wheel of Time series was one of my favorite book series as a teen, at least until book 6, then it became a slog for me. I never watched the show, as I liked how I imagined the characters in my mind as I read the books. To your point, the consistency and logic is important. The Two Rivers early on was largely isolated, with Taren Ferry being the most feasible way in and out. So it would make sense that the population would be largely one race. Rand al-Thor having green eyes and red hair was an oddity (because he was Aiel). However, later in the series it's stated that the Two Rivers had the finest tabac and archers, but then why would they be so isolated? There'd be more merchants and more use of their archery skills as conscripts if they were the finest.
Now, consistency and logic is important outside of fiction. You get whitewashed characters in movies like 21 where all the actors and actresses were white, but the real story were mostly Asians. Then there's Johnny Depp as Tonto. Christian Bale as Moses. Juliette Binoche as Maria Segovia, and the list is f'ing long, mate. This is all in the 2008+, so there's no excuse for the "lack of minority actors/actresses". You only hear the outcry when it's reversed, as "woke", or "anti-white". All your trillionaires, billionaires, and heads of state are white (or Jewish, if you want a distinction), what are these people whining about? The victim card has been played to death, and I'm more sick of that, than all this "woke" stuff on both sides.
Corporations, especially profitable ones often lay off workers to cut costs and increase profitability. There is a saying, if you aren't growing, your dying.
This isn't always correct. Many studios that have been killed by various companies were absolutely NOT profitable.
This isn't true. Selling millions of copies can still be a failure. That's the problem with AAA studios. They often have absolutely bloated and astronomically high development costs due to mismanagement and other factors that create situations where a game isn't successful even if it does sell millions of copies. If a game costs 300 million dollars, it needs to sell 6 to 7 million copies to break even. Remember, not every dollar of the game's cost necessarily goes to the developer.
BioWare was not profitable. BioWare hadn't released a hit game since Dragon Age Inquisition. Though Andromeda made money, it barely made money. EA cancelled all DLC plans for the game as they didn't think it was worth the ROI to continue to pump money into it. Anthem cost upwards of 200 million dollars and though it reportedly sold around 5 million units over its lifetime, it missed internal targets expected of it. That never goes over with executives and shareholders. Keep in mind it was a $60 game and $20 of that could easily have gone to digital distribution and retail distribution sales. Thus, 5 million copies sold doesn't necessarily equate to 200 million dollars. The game was also a live service game that couldn't retain players. While it's not the totally unmitigated disaster Concord and Highguard were, it was a failure. It wasn't really profitable. It also took up 6 years of development time where the studio could have been doing other things. Thus, it wasn't worth the cost or time even if it broke even. (Which it likely didn't.)
EDIT: Updated the numbers for Dragon Age as I relooked up the information and found newer estimates on sales.
Dragon Age the Veilguard cost between 250 and 300 million and only sold 1.9 million units as of 2026 across all platforms. That's the high estimate. This means that the game made upwards of 114 million dollars, but even that's a high estimate because the game was being given away a short time after it released. This is still less than half what it needs to break even.
So lets recap for the mathematically challenged here. BioWare, wasn't insolvent only because EA was paying the bills. As a subsidiary, it wasn't making money. It hadn't really made money since Dragon Age III. Even when money was technically made, all of their offerings post DAIII fell short of expectations. So, here are the numbers. It's also worth noting that this is before digital distribution and retailers take their cut which can be upwards of 30% or more of each individual sale. Keep that in mind.
Mass Effect Andromeda:
Budget - 80 to 100 million dollars.
Units sold - 3-5 million lifetime.
Target Sales - 9 million lifetime units.
Revenue - 180 million or so.
Status: Underperformer. Not a flop, but still falling well short of EA's expectations and performing worse than every other entry into the series.
Anthem
Budget - 100-200 million dollars
Units Sold - Between 3 and 5 million lifetime units
Target Sales - It was a live service game, so it's revenue projections were likely something akin to Destiny's or something similar. The game made its money from initial sales rather than protracted microtransactions.
Revenue - 180 million or so?
Status: Underperformer at best. It's hard to say here, but even if it made back a 200m investment cost, it failed to retain players and was DOA as a live service game. So it missed projections by a long shot here. Like Andromeda, it might have made some money, but not enough to support long term.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard:
Budget - 250-300 million dollars
Units Sold - 1.9 million copies sold across all platforms (as of 2026) is the highest estimate I could find. The company only said 1.5 million players of engagement in a company earnings call which is public. But lets use the 1.9 million figure to be nice.
Target Sales - We don't know what EA's actual target was, but it would have needed to sell somewhere between 4 and 6 million units to break even. It would need to be solidly over that to be profitable.
Revenue - At 1.9 million copies sold,. around 114 million dollars before everyone gets there cut. Sony, Steam and XBOX certainly would have taken their cuts. EA's own app is the only place EA would have gotten all the money of each sale. This doesn't even crack half the game's development costs.
Status: Flop
You have to understand that the only game that really made money here would have been Dragon Age III. It sold around 10-12 million copies to date. That means it made money. And that money would have been what sustained BioWare going forward. It's been 12 years since BioWare had a hit on their hands. During that time, 250-300 million dollars was spent on Dragon Age alone. We don't know how much had been spent on Mass Effect 5, but it would have been in the millions given it was in development for six years. All of the money made, you can take 30% off the top for digital and retail sales. Do the math and the picture becomes clear. Even if the studio wasn't completely insolvent without EA's help, the studio was bleeding EA like a parasite and would continue to do so until Mass Effect 5's release at the very least. Given it was still in early development with a team of only 50 people, that game was YEARS away from release.
In other words, BioWare wasn't profitable. No amount of justification is going to change the math. It had one disappointing release after another. Andromeda didn't make much money. Anthem didn't make much money if any at all. Dragon Age the Veilguard lost a shit ton of money. Mass Effect 5 was YEARS away from completion and I doubt their EA and Saudi overlords had confidence the studio could actually deliver given their track record over the last decade or so.
Yes, profitable studios sometimes get closed when they aren't profitable enough. It's about risk analysis and return on investment for the executives and the accounting departments. BioWare's track record and thus reputation was in the toilet. It wasn't a profitable studio that was unfairly gutted before its time. If anything, EA kept BioWare alive on the vine far longer than it has other underperforming studios in the past.
Now, I didn't forget about Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Unfortunately, we do not know how long that was in development, nor how much it cost to make. Obviously, it was cheaper than a new full release. We don't really know how much it made either. The game sold around 2.3 million units best I can tell. However, that's over its lifetime so far. We don't know how many copies were at the full $59.99 price tag and how many were discounted. It's gone on substantial discounts over the years coming in at $5 and $10 a lot of times. What we do know is that between the buckets of ME5 and Failguard, any profit it made was likely eaten up by the failure and the game that hadn't been finished.
In the interest of full disclosure, we don't have every number involved. BioWare works for EA, so that money went to EA. We do know that EA took an absolute beating when Veilguard launched between it and FC 25 (formerly FIFA) or whatever it was under performing, EA disclosed a loss of around half a billion dollars that quarter. This resulted in a 6 billion dollar loss in stock value early this year. So stop calling BioWare profitable and solvent. It was nothing of the kind.
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Pushing deviant sexual mental illness isn't woke; it's deviant mental illness itself.
I'm not hung up on anything. I can see you haven't read anything I've said earlier either. If you want to keep arguing with yourself, go ahead I suppose.