On Wednesday, Electronic Arts announced it was closing beloved RPG studio BioWare and canceling an in-development Mass Effect sequel. It’s a reminder that, despite EA being owned by new people, the company’s long-running tradition of buying and closing down game studios and publishers, often after gutting them and treating them poorly for years before dealing the final blow, will continue.
Since its founding in 1982, Electronic Arts (the winner of the “Worst Company in America” award in 2012 and 2013) has only really done one thing consistently. Releasing and publishing successful, popular video games? Nope. Making good decisions or protecting its employees? Nah. It’s rarely been consistent at doing any of that stuff. The one thing EA seems capable of doing regardless of the year or the people in charge is buying and then closing studios. It is really good at doing that. It’s probably the best company in the game industry at buying and then killing studios like horrific clockwork.
Just five years after EA was created, it bought and then quickly shut down its first game company. And since then, it has continued to acquire and kill studios regularly. It’s like a bored and spoiled rich kid asking for new toys, only to toss them aside for the help to throw away as it focuses on something shiny and new. People might lose their jobs, but there are profits to be earned and numbers to go up, you see.
Here’s a list of all the studios, developers, and publishers EA has chewed up and spit into the garbage over the decades:
- Batteries Included – Purchased in 1987 and closed that same year.
- Origin Systems – Purchased in 1992. Closed in 2004.
- Bullfrog Productions – Purchased in 1995. Closed in 2001.
- Maxis – Purchased in 1997. Closed in 2015. (Studio name still used by EA.)
- Westwood Studios / EA Pacific – Purchased in 1998. Closed in 2003.
- Kesmai – Purchased in 1999. Closed in 2001.
- DreamWorks Interactive / Danger Close Games – Purchased in 2000. Closed in 2013.
- Black Box Games – Purchased in 2002. Closed in 2013.
- NuFX / EA Chicago – Purchased in 2004. Closed in 2007.
- Hypnotix – Purchased and shut down in 2005. Team folded into EA Tiburon.
- Mythic Entertainment – Purchased in 2006. Closed in 2014.
- Phenomic Game Development – Purchased in 2006. Closed in 2013.
- Headgate Studios / EA Salt Lake – Purchased in 2006. Closed in 2017.
- Pandemic Studios – Purchased in 2007. Closed in 2009.
- J2MSoft – Purchased in 2008 and folded into EA Korea.
- Playfish – Purchased in 2009. Closed in 2013.
- Chillingo – Purchased in 2010. Began shutting down in 2017. Fully closed in 2023.
- Industrial Toys – Purchased in 2018. Closed in 2023.
- BioWare – Purchased in 2007. Closed in 2026.
Looking at the list above, it seems like EA is more interested in destroying the game industry than making video games people will like and buy. It’s easier to explain a lot of EA’s decisions as the company trying to burn the whole house down instead of the much harder-to-buy idea that EA is actually trying to be a successful publisher people like.
By my count, BioWare is the 19th studio or game publisher EA has acquired and killed since 1987. But it’s tricky to nail that number down as EA moves people around, folds teams into other teams, and quietly reshuffles parts of the company. For example, Maxis (the studio behind SimCity) is still technically around, but in name only, as the original Maxis was shut down in 2015. Fun fact: when EA killed Batteries Included in 1987, it did something similar. The more things change…
I’d love to say that EA has learned its lesson and, moving forward, it won’t keep doing this song and dance. But with EA going private and being owned by the worst blunt rotation of people you can imagine, I’m not convinced it won’t keep doing this. In fact, it’s probably going to get worse. Welcome to the modern video game industry. It’s completely on fire, and the people with money don’t seem to care.