BioWare's Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk Are Retiring (1 Viewer)

[joshEH]

Maybe they put out the Dragon Age III announcement-news yesterday to build up some goodwill because of this:
http://kotaku.com/5944287/bioware-founders-ray-muzkya-and-greg-zeschuk-both-retiring
EA has a list of kills in their name bigger than Carlos Hathcock. The benefit of the doubt does not exist, as far as they're concerned.
I just really hope the story went like this -- BioWare founders know they're nearing retirement from the games industry, sell the company to EA so it'll live on, and stick around for a bit to smooth the transition -- rather than like this -- BioWare founders have no plan to retire from the games industry, sell the company to EA, and then are slowly beaten into submission by the bottom-dollar-oriented corporate behemoth.
As a huge fan of many of their games, both versions of the story are sad, but only one of them is actually painful.

 

[mattCR]

Well, I liked their blog post. I tend to think it's a mix of both. They sold hoping to do one thing, then the combination of having F-U money and dealing with the behemoth meant it was easier to just move on and do a beer blog.

 

[joshEH]

Tycho over at Penny Arcade had a couple of interesting tweets about this:

Khoo and I looked at the date of the Bioware buyout/today's announcement. Probably isn't a coincidence that it's almost 5 years exactly.

As somebody with a company people are always trying to buy, this is almost textbook. Acquisition with a five year "backend" payout.

My hopes were that they would step up and right the ship. Shame, but they earned a nice retirement. Thanks, EA. Get ready for "Mass Effect: Spectre Warfare," everybody.
(Seriously, this news sucks ass...no wonder Obsidian went Kickstarter for its new project.)