#EA devs

[unohdukseen]

BioWare uses AI in Dragon Age: The Veilguard codex cards

And I think it's not only there - most of the armor looks like the use AI for references.

But about the codex: this applies to the Grey Warden cards. First, a general view:

All cards in different styles made by different artists. But my eyes caught on this:

It's the same art that was run through AI-editor. And these cards are nearby, in the same game! Maximum disrespect for the work of the artist who made the original art (for DAI btw). The codex contains a few cards with this style, let's see the details:

They all was AI generated. I thought I couldn't be more disappointed in BioWare, but it turns out there is.

[devsgames]

Just this week in games:

- EA laid off 700 workers

- Sony laid of 900 workers

- Rockstar announces in-person work mandates for all employees (a 'soft layoff' that will force some staff to quit, which likely means that actual layoffs are forthcoming)

In 2023 6,000 games workers were laid off. Now in 2024 over 10,000 workers have been laid off, and there's still 10 months to go.

Not to be hyperbolic, but I think this is perhaps the worst year for video games ever if we're measuring by number of layoffs.

[sha-brytols]

no offense but i genuinely can't help but wonder if most of this community is aware that bioware is a triple a gaming corporation and is perfectly capable of creating a toxic and unstable work environment without ea's help

[itseghost]

the rude blacksmith has enchanted me. also feeling so normal about this game that i did pixel art for the first time ever to try and draw my farmer in the game style

[moonhze]

anadius has made it so so easy and safe for people to obtain ts4 and all of its packs without paying for them and i really wish more people knew about this bc the only way to get EA to pay attention to the terrible state of the game is to literally stop giving them money, 🏴‍☠️ the packs to keep playing the game u enjoy but know they only care about appeasing their shareholders/investors/whatever they are and they're all driven by money and have very little interest in the playable state of the game in terms of bugs and features unless the game is so broken that people are actively demanding refunds in mass or just not buying the packs at all.

[asha-mage]

Every gaming news site out here huffing the copium and desperately crowing about how 'this means Mass Effect 5 is the studio's last chance' and 'they'll be full locked in on the Mass Effect!' and I'm just sitting here like. Do you really think. Do you really think that the team who barely managed to make Veilguard is going to be able to turn out a new Mass Effect with a fraction of the personnel and budget? Do you really think that this is anything but EA soft shuttering the studio? Bioware had it's last chance and it was Veilguard, which missed sales targets by more the 50%!

EA will insist that Mass Effect 5 is in development whenever their asked for a few years then quietly lay off or shift the skeleton crew at Bioware when no one is looking and claim it's just been shifted around internally, until everyone stops asking.

The party is over. The chairs are going up onto the table. It's time to pay the caterer and move on.

[softplumbs]

I'm sorry but I'm genuinely CACKLING.

CACKLINGGGGG

EA took games considered abandonware, thought 'how can we resell this?'

Did minimal, and when I say minimal work I mean googled the most common issue, found a mod and took credit for it, and there's stilllll people reaching into their pockets. Baby, what do you mean 'is this limited time / edition or can I wait for my payday?'. Baby, what the fuck?

No honey. Keep your 40 buckies, on me.

Installer / Downloader all in one, their discord has bug fixes. You have all the mods necessary (most likely the exact same ones that EA's intern stole to put into the 're-release') linked.

You want to cry as you google how the fuck to get rid of that clown making your sim go insane in Sims 1?

Here you go baby. ABANDONWARE, because that's what these games have been for the past 15 years. Free for anyone to grab as they are no longer supported.

OH and reminder, you do not have to pay 1k+ for the Sims 4 either.

[gikairan]

More than ever, i feel like executives should be the first people in a corporate structure to see a pay cut before any employee is laid off

THAT is where the wasteful spend is. In CEO and other executive suite salaries. The actual people making the product being sold arent the waste

[lizzybeeee]

I will never emotionally recover from this

[housederiva]

i'm so depressed about how staunchly they refuse to return to their unfinished game

I sighed heftily when I read this cause yeah, I agree. It feels very much like 'okay okay we finished the game now shut up and let us move on to Mass Effect'

And if ME5 is treated the same way as Veilguard then that's all she wrote for BioWare. The vast majority of us aren't here because of how pretty the graphics are or how shiny the UI is. It's the story some of us have spent nearly two decades with and the characters that have been a gateway to escape from the actual world for a moment. It's the love and care that was put into Dragon Age that moved it away from being just another AAA game shelled out by EA. Each of the four games has been drastically different yes, but Dragon Age has always been a collaborative story that used to feel more like art than an obligation.... and now that their focus has shifted to what brings in the biggest revenue pot... dear listener I'm afraid

[inquisitor-julia]

like.....how do i even begin to process the fall of DA when the series, the characters, the ocs, the lore, this blog, everything has meant so much to me for so long and through so much

genuinely sitting here staring at my screen mentally buffering rn

[sanshofox]

Well this hella sounds like their other statement, from months ago, just before their huge layoff. They even used some of the same words and phrasings. Really this doesn’t sound too good for bioware in general 🥲

[angelknives]

"It's unfair to compare Veilguard to BG3!"

Err, no it isn't? A game supposedly in the same genre, made by a studio with experience in that genre, produced around the same time. How is that unfair? I love BG3 but Larian isn't reinventing the wheel. It's building on what works in this genre and (gasps) improving on criticism it got on its previous games.

But sure, let's not compare DAV to BG3, how about we compare it to:

Disco Elysium

Divinity Original Sin 2

The Witcher 3

Pillars of Eternity 2

Elden Ring

While all different, they all contain elements Bioware gutted out of Dragon Age: The Veilguard (like a good snappy title), to reach a younger broader new audience. These titles didn't gut themselves and were highly successful on every metric. And they all came out between DAI and DAV, so Bioware could have learned from that.

Especially as they already tried to dumped down, simplified approach with Andromeda and most people weren't happy with that either.

Oh and I forget one important game DAV could have learned from:

Dragon Age: Inquisition

[beastieballgame]

haha I distracted you with a pretty picture by @irischroma ….

anyway SORRY IT’S BEEN FOREVER but the great news is that beastieball’s early access launch trailer is releasing LITERALLY TOMORROW (NOVEMBER 1st!!) you can watch the premiere on Klei’s youtube, or watch it with us in the discord server :)

Be there or Beware…. oooooOooooOooOoo

[shadovvheart]

"Slowly and painfully BioWare is figuring out that it simply can't do more than one project at a time anymore."

"BW has existed in different ways/structures through its history. We're currently entering into an "unprecedented time" for BW"

"DA:TV being a 'direct sequel' would have been an unlikely path"

"It'll be a [long] while to DA5 [hypothetically speaking, if it gets made]"

"Mark Darrah expects that the next Dragon Age will once again be pretty different to the last iteration"

"DA has been looking for larger audiences in every iteration. EA has never understood the franchise"

[stormsbourne]

the fact that the ea CEO basically said "I told you we should have made datv a live service game and then it would have sold good," like a week after doing horrendous layoffs of everyone in the team, that's going to be my supervillain origin story