BioWare Montreal absorbed by EA Motive. Mass Effect IP returns to Edmonton

If they don't make a DLC, it certainly won't be because they are moving people. That's like throwing money away. Not to mention I doubt changes such as this one make a developer lose much, of any, time. (if we assume they would just move 100 guys from here to there)

Actually merging a full studio like this is a significant undertaking, and any software company with any competence would likely not schedule something like this coincide with any release. I've been through two office moves in the space of a few years involving far fewer people and it's a lot more complicated than people realise. 

If this move was actually to support some broader strategic goal regarding their future releases, then realistically DLC projects would be unlikely to be greenlit. On the subject of throwing money away - cancelling a project is a far more blatant example of that then choosing not to pursue a project in the first place.

Not really. Cancelling a project would be cutting your loses. Companies to this. In your scenario, I'm assuming Mass Effect Andromeda would had been a success, but EA wouldn't be able to captalize on that because they would be moving the team to a different building. And that just doesn't sound logical to me, at all. 

Let me ask you another question. Say MEA get no DLC, you still would say that Jason Schreier was wrong? That his reporting of Andromeda post content and sequel being cancelled because of its recepetion is a lie?

Think this through - if the DLC was under development, what possible benefit could there be of getting rid of it midway through? The expensive parts have already been paid for. Distribution costs peanuts. And clearly they still had people working on the MP portion, so it's not like they closed up shop. Given EA's track record, MEA would have to have been a financial disaster for this to make any sense.



You're asking two questions here. Clearly, if no DLC is coming, then he'd be right. Whether the reasons for cancellation were a lie (or more likely, a bit of jounrnalistic embellishment) would depend on what the reasons actually were. If it had been cancelled then I would assume that there would have been some content made, and this guy's articles in the past (particularly the Destiny article) have made a point of delving into stuff like this. No such insight is present here. We don't even know what it was about.

Given that he presumably knew about this merger but chose to present it as 'downsizing' (if he didn't, his sources can't be that well-informed), I'm afraid I'm not willing to take anything he says purely on faith.

Well, how far long was DA2: Exalted March expansion? Just playing devil's advocate here. Clearly (from BioWare's/EA's point-of-view) it was more beneficial to focus on what would be DAi then to finish Exalted March.

As before, unless you're arguing that he doesn't understand how to speak english properly, then there really isn't much wiggle room here. No journo on earth would innocently describe what now know - i.e. a full merger of two studios in the same city - as 'downsizing', 'scaled down' or whatever else along those lines. They certainly wouldn't forget to make it clear a second time during the edit.

Of course he may have honestly misinterpreted what he was told (the whole 'row upon row of desks being empty' thing sticks in my mind - at the time it made it sound like the sky was falling, but empty desks tend to be a thing when you're shifting people to new offices), or even been willfully fed a line by some bioware dev pissed off his commute to work has been extended, but both don't realistically alter the point of being unable to simply trust his word. 

My impression is that only part of Bioware Montreal was being moved by that time, and a part remained to work on Andromeda content (patches and online). And even if we assume he chose his words badly, it was soon changed to "scaled down".

Honestly, I find that dismissing his credibility just because for 10 minutes the title of his article might have been misleading for some is an huge exaggeration.

They did not cancel the expansion for the reason you gave, they cancelled it because we told them that we would not buy any dlc or expansions unless the y fixed the rubbish act 3 of the game.



They did not fix act 3 so they cancelled the expansion because they knew that not enough people would buy it.

Exactly. MEA did not sell more than DAI.

I'm not a Merger's and Acquisitions expert and I have no intention of being one, but I decided to ask around to see what happens to two companies during a merger. It seems like a few things could happen:
1. EA Motive remains.
2. Bioware Montreal Remains.
3. Both companies remain
4. They merge together but get a new name for the whole studio.
(This is just what I got so far, I still need to do some more research)

The only thing that makes Bioware games fun is Bioware games.