EA has done it again, EA has shut down Maxis

[Chris Stern]

EA has once again shown that they are the unicron of the games industry as they shut down Maxis adding it's name to the long laundry list of studios picked up by EA, mismanged into the ground and shut down. So now Maxis joins Origin studios, Bullfrog, Mythic, Westwood, Danger Close, Pandemic and many others and if history has shown us anything they will soon be joined by Bioware,  Visceral Games and Popcap.

It's always sad to see once great studios picked up and then run into the ground as EA starts stripping away anything and everything that made the company special in the first place and by proxy made EA want to buy them. It's almost like WWE when they go out of their way to bring in a talented wrestler from elsewhere, strip them of everything that made them such a talent to make them fit in more  with "WWE" vision(read: Vince's vision) and then release them because they flopped.

I have never nor do I think I ever will, understand the logic of doing things like that..I really won't.

I think this little comic sums up what it's like for studios who end up getting bought up by EA..


It's funny though I remember when EA was not the evil empire they are now, back in the 80's to the 90's they were a brilliant studio that made millions through both solid sports titles starting with Madden back on the Apple 2 and other 8-bit computers and some really creative and fun games like Realm of Impossibility, Racing Destruction set, Mail order monsters, Demonstone, Bodukai the martial spirit and so many others in the 8-bit home computer era and then the Immortal, Mutant League Football, Mutant League Hockey, NHL, Road Rash, Haunting, ect. in the 16 bit console era. Then all the sudden they became what they have become a large monolithic beat eating up talented dev studios and running them into the ground, pissing customers off with horrid anti consumer cash grabbing BS, rushing games out to market well before they are done looking at you Battlefield 4 and I haven't forgotten about the two of you Ultima's 8 and 9 and then get pissed at the studios for doing what EA corperate has told them to do such as rushing the games out, tacking on needless DLC, cutting feature out to sell them back, microtransations, ect..   

[Black Death]

i don't see bioware falling to the same fate ... making them to much money for them to fuck with ...

[The TeeJ of Philly]

What did maxis make?

[Tritch]

The whole SimCity and Sims game lines I believe.

[Chris Stern]

i don't see bioware falling to the same fate ... making them to much money for them to fuck with ...

So was Maxis, so was Origin systems, so was Bullfrog, so was Westwood, do I really need to go over the list?
BD the thing you got to keep in mind is while yes Bioware is making EA money eventually as EA tinkers with them more and more they will eventually stop and then that is it. They already lost EA lots of money with The old republic  all it's going to take is one or two more games that don't meet brass's expectations and then it's going to be the end of them.

I am not saying Bioware is going to be dead in the next year or so but it will happen, People thought the same thing wouldn't happen to Maxis since out of the companies EA binged bought in the late 90's to early 2000's Maxis was the only one left standing and had stood for years till EA forced them to release a awful Simcity that bombed, followed by a crippled Sims 4 where the goal was to double dip by selling features taken out back as well as on all the eventual expansions..

But yeah my point is Bioware will be closed maybe not next year or the year after, it may be five years from now but it will happen and EA will be the cause of it. This is all but set in stone, honestly the next company that is on the chopping block is Dead space and Battlefield dev Viceral games.

What did maxis make?

Simcity series
SimAnt
SimLife
SimEarth
The Sims series and The Sims online
Spore
Dark Spore
Sky chase
Unnatural Selection
Simfarm
Zaark and the Night Team
SimTown
SimGolf
SimCopter
Full Tilt! 2 Pinball
Fathom: The Game of Tiles
Streets of SimCity
SimSafari
Marble Drop

[Stoner]

The difference between Visceral and other companies is target audience.  The people that buy Battlefield every year don't care that last years is the same as this years is the same as next years.  They want the new game.  If there is some DLC with a new weapon or a new skin for a weapon, sure lets get it.

The people that were going to buy SimCity though aren't the type to put u p with EA's normal money grubbing bullshit.  The people most likely to buy and play SimCity, by the nature of the game, are more inclined to be meticulous about the things they spend money on.  EA saw they couldn't just money grub with SimCity the way they try to do with everything else, so they shut it down.

Honestly, I'm VERY surprised they are as "patient" with Bioware as they are.  We don't see a new Mass Effect/Dragon Age every year, or even alternating years.  Sure the games get packed with additional DLC(or in the case of DA:I the godawful Multiplayer BS) but even then its(usually)better content than you would get from other EA games anyway.

[The TeeJ of Philly]

I bet the profits made off of the sims isn't enough to cover the losses made by the rest.

[Goldferg]

EA has once again shown that they are the unicron of the games industry

Did you just quote Jim Fucking Sterling, Son?

[Chris Stern]

Did you just quote Jim Fucking Sterling, Son?

Yes, Yes I did.

[Chris Stern]

The difference between Visceral and other companies is target audience.  The people that buy Battlefield every year don't care that last years is the same as this years is the same as next years.  They want the new game.  If there is some DLC with a new weapon or a new skin for a weapon, sure lets get it.

The people that were going to buy SimCity though aren't the type to put u p with EA's normal money grubbing bullshit.  The people most likely to buy and play SimCity, by the nature of the game, are more inclined to be meticulous about the things they spend money on.  EA saw they couldn't just money grub with SimCity the way they try to do with everything else, so they shut it down.

Honestly, I'm VERY surprised they are as "patient" with Bioware as they are.  We don't see a new Mass Effect/Dragon Age every year, or even alternating years.  Sure the games get packed with additional DLC(or in the case of DA:I the godawful Multiplayer BS) but even then its(usually)better content than you would get from other EA games anyway.

While I agree battlefield fans will put up with the DLC bullshit they are not going to put up with rushed and unfinished releases like Battlefield 4 was, the backlash on that was a mess and not to mention the complaints about Dead Space 3 which was "EA-tiszed" the trend contuines EA will shut the studio down and just move the main Battlefield games to other studios.  As for Bioware, I think it's due to various factors that have kept them safe so far. Minus the big loss they had with The Old Republic, Bioware has so far made bank for EA and unless EA starts getting desperate, if they start missing deadlines and such like Origin Systems did which will give EA a excuse to step in and have more of a hands on role in the company or they have one or two more games that fail to meet company expectations sales wise like Westwood did they should be fine for a few more years.   

[Tritch]

The fan base of Bioware games will keep EA out of there I believe. Mass Effect and Dragon Age are both extremely popular series that people will continue returning too, and I don't have to talk about the Star Wars following. People will always eat up Star Wars games, even if they're disappointing (though I have never played a Star Wars game so I have no idea about the issues that happened that you are referring too.)

[Chris Stern]

The fan base of Bioware games will keep EA out of there I believe. Mass Effect and Dragon Age are both extremely popular series that people will continue returning too, and I don't have to talk about the Star Wars following. People will always eat up Star Wars games, even if they're disappointing (though I have never played a Star Wars game so I have no idea about the issues that happened that you are referring too.)

The issue was that Bioware spent millions of dollars to launch a Star Wars MMO called "The old republic" which was set in the pre-film star wars universe and it tanked. As for the fan arguement yeah but fans were buying Bullfrog's games such as Syndicate, Syndicate Wars, Theme Park, Theme Hospital, Magic Carpet, Populous, Powermonger, ect. But it took one game not meeting expectations to cause EA to step in and run the company into the ground, Origin Systems made EA money hell especially with Wing Commander 3: Heart of the tiger and Ultima Online the first real MMO, but in that situation due to Origin Systems founder Richard Garriott under orders from his new bosses tried to change how he conducted his development team on Ultima 8: Pagan which was the first of the Ultima series to be done as part of EA and he pushed the team hard to make the deadline but the game was a mess because of it and as the guys working at Origin at that time put it EA gave them enough rope to hang themselves with as because Pagan was a dissapoitment due to all the bugs and such and so EA decided to start taking a more active role in the company because they did exactly what they wanted them to do and it failed, same thing happened with Ultima 9 when EA half way through development pulled the entire team off the game to push out Ultima online and so when they came back to Ultima 9 two years later the game's engine was out of date and had to start over from scratch to which EA eventually plastered a ship it or kill it deadline on it and the game was a even bigger mess then 8 was.

The point I am trying to make is with EA all it takes is one or two missteps with them and that's it they take a firm control over the company and run it into the ground. Just google some of the horror stories from former employees of now dead EA acquired studios and you will see the same patterns happening again and again like some bad episode of the twilight zone where a man is forced to repeat the same mistakes over and over again for eternity. So while Bioware maybe safe it's only a matter of time before EA brass finds a excuse to take control of the studio and do what they always do.

[Tritch]

I know EA is a shitty company and I know they've run companies into the ground. I just don't see it happening with Bioware. For instance, I've never heard of a single game you just mentioned. That's where Bioware is different. The other studios make highly niche market video games. Sure I've heard of the sims and simcity, but those are niche video games. Dragon Age and Mass Effect are mainstream games that just about anybody who would play a game have at least heard about. That's where Bioware has the leg up. Am I saying it's impossible to happen, no. It could very well happen, I just don't think it will.

[Chris Stern]

I know EA is a shitty company and I know they've run companies into the ground. I just don't see it happening with Bioware. For instance, I've never heard of a single game you just mentioned. That's where Bioware is different. The other studios make highly niche market video games. Sure I've heard of the sims and simcity, but those are niche video games. Dragon Age and Mass Effect are mainstream games that just about anybody who would play a game have at least heard about. That's where Bioware has the leg up. Am I saying it's impossible to happen, no. It could very well happen, I just don't think it will.

Of course you probley never heard of those games, they were probley made before your time. Ultima for example back in it's heyday was the RPG series, hell it was the series along with Sirtech's Wizardry that created the Video game RPG market in the US and eventually kickstarted it in Japan. Wing Commander was also a huge hit series and created the space combat sim genre hell the series was such a big hit that for the third and fourth games they were able to get Mark Hamill, Malcolm Mcdowell, John Rhys-Davies and others to star in the game when they went to using FMV for the cut scenes and this was back when FMV expensive and because of the cost would often have to use non-actors so to have guys who can act like the ones I mentioned was really expensive so..
Wing Commander 4 - Good Ending

and no that didn't lead to EA killing the studio if anything EA actually threw them more money to keep producing the Wing Commander games till Privater 2 and Wing Commander Prophecy which EA fucked up by forcing them both to be rushed out to market to meet some silly Xmas holiday time deadline much like Ultima 8..

But I am tired of trying to point out that yes Bioware will meet the same fate as everyone else EA has acquired history is on my side on this as it's shown again and again the only other company more inept when it comes to their acquisitions is Microsoft.

Maxis was the longest surviving one which was acquired back in 97 and just like people are saying about Bioware they were saying the same about Maxis and look at them now dead because EA screwed them up in the end they drove the visionary of the company out and then mismanaged it into the ground five or so year later.     

[Kieran King]

You know Maxis itself isn't actually being shut down, right? It's just that particular physical location in Emeryville.