The saving grace for the games industry is that barriers to entry are pretty low. You don’t need to be a big established player to make a great game. Actually, an argument could be made for the opposite - the bigger and more successful a studio is, the less likely it is to continue producing compelling content. Are you really more interested in Bethesda putting out more Fallout or Elder Scrolls games than you are in seeing more from the makers of Clair Obscur or Kingdom Come: Deliverance? No. No, you are not.
This is true.
Some of my favorite games I’ve ever played came from Bioware, and the original Mass Effect trilogy is my favorite game series of all time. I even thought Andromeda was okay, though inferior to the original games (though considering those were my favorite games ever I guess technically every other game is inferior so that’s a meaningless qualifier). They also did the KOTOR games (and SWTOR was great for a while too), the under-appreciated Jade Empire, the Dragon Age games, Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights games, and so on. I played and completed so many of their games.
But they haven’t made an actual good game for a long time. The last Dragon Age game was crap; at first I really enjoyed it, but its flaws built up more and more as I played and by the time I finished it I was beating the game just to say I beat it. It had little joy. Whether it’s EA to blame, or the departure of good talent, or just entropy, Bioware just didn’t have it anymore. I love the idea of a ME5 game, but would it be any good? Going by their recent track record I would probably end up hating it, and I’d rather not have my favorite franchise soured by a regrettable last entry like Dragon Age did.
Also, some former Bioware folks are making Exodus, which is considered a spiritual successor to Mass Effect. What I’ve seen of it looks good, and I have more faith in the OG folks making a better game anyway.
And I’m also seeing reports that the TV show for Mass Effect being done by Amazon Studios is still moving forward despite this Bioware closure. I was excited for this show, and was worried that with Bioware gone, so would this, but nope. It’s being done by the same people who made the Fallout TV series, and if they have the same sort of faithfulness to the original source material it should be really good.
@Smapti is correct of course, and I’m letting my political bitterness taint my post and enjoyment of the game, I should report myself to a game room mod… which is also myself. Hmmm. 
More seriously, @Gorsnak makes a good point, I am not in any harmed by the loss of Bioware as a company (or the same for most of the big ones like Bethesda), I’m mourning the loss of the games and stories that I wanted to continue.
But those creative teams are long gone, and the chance of recapturing the magic is always a shot in the dark.
Even before that. In the 80’s they were frequently distributors for smaller game development houses that didn’t have their own distribution wings. For example, the reason Fallout was released was that in 1988 when Interplay released Wasteland, EA was the distributor. As a result, while Interplay owned the code base and all other intellectual property, EA as distrirbutor had ownership of the name. And then in the mid-90s when Interplay wanted to create a sequel, EA, who had done nothing with Wasteland since the original distribution, wanted to charge an exorbitant sum to release the name. Instead, Interplay created a spiritual successor. It would be a long time before they finally got the rights to the name. (A similar thing happened with Bard’s Tale which was alo EA distributed.)
Bioware went ahead and released the trailer for the now-defunct Mass Effect: Universe.
I hadn’t been optimistic that a Mass Effect sequel would be particularly compelling, but I’ll be damned if a special ops team working for the Shadow Broker wouldn’t have been a pretty awesome premise for the game.
On which note, Richard Garriott apparently gets to reclaim the copyrights for Ultima next year.
A top-down remake of Quest of the Avatar or The Black Gate with modern game design sensibilities would be amazing.
That’s a gutting development—Mass Effect was one of the defining series of its era, and it’s hard to imagine a new installment being shelved indefinitely. I’m especially curious what happens to The Old Republic; shuttering an MMO is a much messier process than canceling a single-player project.
As pointed out before, Bioware hasn’t had anything to do with SWTOR for a while, so this has no impact on that game.
Is it? It seems to happen quite frequently. New World is shutting down in a few months, Anthem died a while ago, and several small MMOs die every year.
I believe he has said more Ultima games will be released. Who knows? He may produce an Ultima X or total reboot.
AAA gaming as a whole is in trouble. Some of it is costs. Some of it does appear to be politics and culture. But a lot of it seems like it’s studios coasting and slowly burning goodwill gained from much older games. Bioware with their last three releases. Rockstar taking forever with GTA. Bethesda just re-re-releasing Skyrim. For that matter, I’d say the most popular product in the Fallout universe wasn’t even theirs but Obsidian. Arguably Insomniac with the latest Spider-Man and Wolverine games. Naughty Dog hasn’t really released anything in six years. Bungie basically going down. Same with 343.
On the plus side, most of the stuff worth remembering can still be bought and played.
Anthem wasn’t an MMO though. It was an online game, of course, but it was closer to a lobby-based matchmaking game; you ran around solo until you went on a mission where you could be matched with other players (which also worked smoothly in my experience), then after the mission you went back to the town/hub until the next mission.
I also really liked it. The story was crap and it had a ton of flaws but flying around in those mecha and getting into fights with hordes of aliens was awesome. The “build up debuffs then detonate them” gameplay really worked for me. And the flying around part was made so well that I could just have fun making my way around a map. It had so much potential.
But your general point that it’s easy to shut down servers is spot-on. You just announce they are shutting down and when, then shut them down. It’s not like gamers aren’t used to it.
I’m not so sure about this.
This year has produced some excellent games…many AAA.
At the end of the day there is billions of dollars out there for PC gaming. More than what the movie industry makes. Someone will go for it.
In fact, the highest selling(money wise) entertainment product is GTA V. Made more than any movie, book, or television show. I heard this, never fully fact checked it. I can see a long-running TV show equaling it, but those are a heck of a lot longer and drawn out than a video game.
GTA V has an ongoing in game purchase system though, where you can buy luxury yachts and cars and such for the multiplayer mode.
Would be funny if AI starts allowing us to buy similar things for TV show characters…
Yeah, it was so much fun just to fly around and through the waterfalls and caves etc. I really wish they sold that game instead of shutting it down.