3w ago

'On a pirate ship, they’d toss the captain overboard': Larian head of publishing tears into EA after BioWare layoffs waste 'institutional knowledge'

www.pcgamer.com 'On a pirate ship, they'd toss the captain overboard': Larian head of publishing tears into EA after BioWare layoffs waste 'institutional knowledge'

A profit drop doesn't have to mean a closed shop.

20 comments

We made profits, but not quite as much as we wanted to, so next time we will make a franchised sequel with AI workers instead. Nothing can go wrong.
- (In a Morgan Freeman narrator voice) Oh how wrong they were. Some might say that they shit the bed with such thinking and actions. Others... Might believe that they didn't know better. The fuck they didn't! The 'all mighty dollar' was their carrot on a stick that was placed in front of them by nearly soul dead board members and deep pocketed 'investors.' A fixation on the "all mighty dollar" in this extreme capitalistic parent company EA, has shown us endless times, they don't give a fuck about you or your hobby. Just as long as you continue to throw your money at them like a good little dipshit who can't seem to realize that you're being played.
  
  I actually heard Freeman in there excepting the cussin' which I'm a fan of and use often but doesn't lend itself to his voice imo. Still awesome tho
  
  This was perfect. Have way through mogan freeman started narrating.

Read that as "Larian, Head of Publishing Tears", as in crying.
- English, man.
  
  English, where the word 'jam' can mean traffic, a stuck door, to play music, to cram things into a tight space or a fruity preserve lol

What institutional knowledge? Most of the people who made the games we loved at Bioware are long gone... EA found them to be too expensive so they resorted to hiring cheaper "talent" like Heir. Now it's too late, they have the IP but none of the passion and inventiveness.
- So the talent was laid off? Resulting in loss of institutional knowledge? Damn.
  
  Yes, I'm sure this 2025 article comes right on time to address the 15y old layoffs that gutted Bioware before you could speak.
- While ya ain't wrong that bioware isn't what it used to be your comment claims there's not been talent in the building for 15 years which is just silly if you think about it. Like, they can still program games 10 times better n you, or me, or, for the context of this quote, biowares management.
  Yer just taking the definition of "talent" (in this case used to describe the people who program games, separate from management who produce nothing) and changing it to 'making great games you like' which is 1000% not the point he was making.
  
  Same guy who happens to be an exec.
  Same guy who said "marketing is dead" is playing the CDPR startegy "we're the good guys" to endear himself with the public. It's a dangerous game, especially when he decides jack shit about game structure, engine, writing et al. He's Literally a marketeer.
  Regarding Bioware, I actually went to check game release dates. Turns out the signals they were bleeding talent were there already when ME3 released, roughly 13-15 ago. Wow, ty for mentioning that, Bioware has had 15 of releasing bland crap I don't find good. Given the current state of the studio, I'm not the only one with that view, clearly.
- What institutional knowledge?
  Did you play BG3?

~~Unionize~~ Mutiny!

Is Larian saying that we should be good little pirates?

I look around confused, hook held up like a questionmark and in a quiet and potentially ashamed voice I lean in and ask "so are you sayin we aren't on a galleon of nefarious aims then...?

20 comments