https://heavy.com/games/2017/10/studios-ea-has-killed-visceral-games/
http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/slow_clap_citizen_kane.gif

So, who's next?

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/electronic_arts_acquires_respawn_entertainment_creators_of_titanfall

It's the little thing but we just went from 12 to 5 servers in the Star Wars MMO.

Of course many folks say it's long overdue.

edit: Looks like they lost money this quarter:

https://ycharts.com/companies/EA/profit_margin

Probably just a paper loss but we all know how Wall Street hates negatives.

They are just about to release Battlefront 2, don't you worry about their profits.

Didn't say a thing about me worrying about their profits.

Looks like an expected seasonal lull to me.

Bioware is the next one they will close down, I think. And like clockwork they will buy another rpg dev some weeks later. I hope they will stay the hell away from CDPR. Hmm...picture EA owning GoG....

respawn's gonna be next haha

BioWare's got a couple of years left. What will happen is EA will fade out SW TOR and when it's shuttered, they'll start making moves to close down BioWare.

Honestly, the two doctors laughed all the way to the bank, but they totally screwed over their legacy by bedding with the devil in EA. I guess as they lay sleeping in their piles of cash, it doesn't matter though.

I'm still mad at PopCap for selling out, almost instantly killing themselves in the process.

Depends on Anthem. EA seemed to put all of Bioware's money into that project. If it doesn't become a huge success, Bioware is in deep trouble.

I haven't seen anyone get all giddy about Anthem so far, to be honest. I saw a lot more interest when Dragon Age and Mass Effect got announced back in the day. Anthem seems to be more of a "meh" kind of thing.

I don't feel strongly about big game companies closing down unneeded studios they have acquired earlier, and I don't know why others would either.

If there is still a big need for those games which the studio is making, then I guess the studio employees will form a new studio making similar games, with a different name. Like the Gothic people continuing to do Arcania games or how was it.

If the studio is still making games that don't sell, I don't see what would be the point of trying to keep them alive. They'd die anyway in the long run. People move to new companies and jobs etc.

The way I see it, the problem is EA is buying those companies, forcing them to make quick unpolished games to milk the franchise and once they get drained they toss them out. The companies are not becoming unneeded because they are bad, they are becoming unneeded because EA is making them so.

That's exactly what is happening to Bioware right now. Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda were terrible awful games. Not because Bioware is a bad team but because EA forced them to make drastic changes and rushed both games.

Yes, the media doesn't seem that hyped about Anthem, however we are still a year away from its release date. Plus it's a Destiny/The Division-type of game, with multiplayer and single-player content fused together. My impression is that our gaming media doesn't like these kinds of games.

So the question is wether these gamestudios still would have excisted if they were independent?
I don't think so to be honest.
Just to name a few:

Bullfrog: Peter Molyneux's lies would eventually have catched up to him and his company at some point.

Origin Systems: Was already on the brink of bankrupcy when EA took them over.

Westwood: I highly doubt they would have survived the decline in the RTS genre during the death of PC gaming (7th generation of consoles).

Take Looking Glass for example, they made a few games for EA (System Shock 1 & 2) but were never owned by them and they have been long gone.
Other big game publishers mostly don't close their studios but lay off most of the staff when a game is done, I don't see that less evil than what EA does, it's just more masking the fact.
Or take the missmanaged mess what is Interplay, they made some of the greatest games and still managed to squander Fallout and look where that game is now.