James Ohlen left Bioware

After 22 years it would be hard to conclude that the guy hasn't done his time.

(moving to BioWare News section, as we could just as usefully discuss his other game contributions than Anthem).

Thanks for the heads up, I know to start purging my feeds of people starting to make videos of how instrumental he was to BioWare and how BioWare is going to crash and burn without him while not putting any context into the content besides their personal opinions.

Edit: Too late, the first three videos on my YouTube feed were about this.  I wonder when people would start talking more about every developer that leaves a company.

Yes.

This is the new direction of gaming - smaller, tighter studios with a common vision and no corpirate overlords to answer to.

Amy makes amazing games, I imagine she will make more amazing games surrounded by her people, people that chose her as much as she chose them.

In this time, why do we need massive corporations in every consumer arena? It makes no sense, and I honestly believe it is the least efficient and least profitable way to make quality games. The corporation has demands, to people that only care about money. Fuck those people - invest in graphene or pencil patents or whatever the fuck else.

Let EA die already.

Indeed. That game devs are not chained slaves and may have a say over their own employment. 

Well...after so many other long time BioWare devs left in the middle of development, it's getting to the point where it is more surprising that developers are staying rather than leaving.

Challenge accepted.

*deep breath*

Did really that many people leave mid-development? We see some devs, including long-term devs, from Anthem leave in past months and I suspect that's mostly because the project is nearing to an end - nevermind that it's logical to see some people reach the end of their contracts or retire/move to different things that they may have planned months or years ahead before the game got delayed.

Yep, with the change from "Roaming Dragon', writing inspiration for the Dragon Age series is screwed. 

Isn't it what happened (to an extent) when Bioware was temporarily closing its online store not so long ago? Nevermind shutting the BSN...

They didn't close the store for good, AFAIK they're switching their merchandise provider.

How should I know? I'm not someone who sells game merchandise or know what's happening behind the scenes. But it's been a near-complete Bioware lull for a while now and it shall be that way until Anthem gets released, so I think there may not be enough of a financial incentive to keep the store open in oncoming months. It's not a stretch to suspect that they may relaunch it closer to February when there'd be a renewed interest in their wares.

Plus, if they're changing their merchandise provider it also means that they're likely changing (most of?) their merchandise. Somebody has to design and then produce enough of this stuff to eventually sell it. It can take a while, depending on what they want to offer in their store in the future.