EA’s Sale to Saudi-Led Consortium Was “Final Nail in the Coffin” for BioWare, Co-Founder Says

Greg Zeschuk, one of BioWare’s well-known co-founders, has finally addressed the studio’s closure last week, describing it as “kind of sad” and saying that EA’s leveraged buyout by a consortium involving Saudi interests “was the final nail in the coffin.”

Speaking to 80 Level, Zeschuk — who founded BioWare in 1995 alongside fellow medical students Ray Muzyka and Augustine Yip — said he was fishing when the news of the studio’s closure broke. “I got like 10 texts,” Zeschuk said. “I came off the river and got to my little room and opened my phone, and it’s like, ‘I’m so sorry to hear about BioWare.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh shit.'”

By the time he flew home later, he had apparently already digested the news and missed most of the discourse surrounding it. “I wasn’t there to share in the moment,” he said, “which in some ways was nice because I was able to kind of just take my time with it.”

“I’ve kind of gone through all the emotions long, long ago” -Greg Zeschuk

“I’m not saying it doesn’t hurt and doesn’t suck,” he added. “And I think it’s kind of sad. It’s actually, in some ways, saddest for the city of Edmonton, where we’re from, because we were kind of this beacon of hope and excitement and possibility. We showed you could do something really special in a place that was not known for doing things like that.”

Zeschuk and Muzyka retired from BioWare in 2012, the year Mass Effect 3 was released, so they have been away from the business for a considerable amount of time. They have moved on. “I’ve kind of gone through all the emotions long, long ago,” Zeschuk explained.

BioWare did change thereafter, and he seemed to accept it, but as a result of a gradual change propelled naturally by people leaving and others coming in. “I’m not going to have so much hubris to say Ray and I were the lynchpin in the chain, our departure ruined everything,” he said. “It wasn’t that at all. It’s a slow and insidious kind of thing and again, it’s the people. The people are the key.”

When he heard the private acquisition of EA had gone through, that’s when he feared things might be headed to a bad place. “I think it was the final nail in the coffin,” he said. “I think that was the crux of it in a sense. BioWare makes these kinds of unusual games that take a long time and they’re complicated and so it’s easier just to pump out sports games every year, and that’s a better business model in some ways.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Zeschuk talked a little about the origins of BioWare selling to EA in 2008 – “We had options actually” – and about personally sliding away from story-driven games towards more action-centred games like the Nioh series and Elden Ring.

Since 2017, Zeschuk has been building a beer-brewing company called Blind Enthusiasm, which apparently now employs a dozen people and ships tens of thousands of bottles of beer a year. This interview is the only one Zeschuk has given. Muzyka has so far declined to be interviewed. The third BioWare co-founder, Augustine Yip, left the company long ago, back in 1998.

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FromSoftware’s The Duskbloods – a game that is best described as Bloodborne meets Sekiro meets Темная Souls, with jetpacks and dinos thrown in – has been delayed from its 2026 launch window into an unspecified time in 2027.

“While development of The Duskbloods is at the final adjustment stage, we have made the decision to move the launch window to 2027,” a tweet from the game’s official Twitter account said. “We apologise to players who have been kindly awaiting the release of this title and thank you for your patience and support.”

A follow-up message continued: “During the network test, we saw active interest in the core concepts of the game, including combat, strategic depth, and player expression. To further enhance these aspects, we have decided to move the launch, allowing time for final adjustments to game rules and balancing.”

There had been a suggestion previously that the title may have launched in September, but the prospective date for the unannounced release came and went without ceremony. Many consumers were uncertain whether the game would ever make its vague ‘2026’ release window, given that nothing had been heard from either publisher Nintendo or developer FromSoft since August’s playtests.

Appetite for the game is ravenous, it seems: in the aforementioned closed network test, more people applied to try the game out than Elden Ring Nightreign — and that’s an impressive stat, considering The Duskbloods is only launching on Switch 2.

But maybe a bit more time in the oven is a good thing for this peculiar, experimental title: the network test hasn’t been without problems, as the first session ended abruptly following major connectivity issues. Though these were ironed out by the later sessions, here’s hoping a full launch will be a little more stable than that.

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