The closure of BioWare, the Canadian studio behind numerous RPG classics including Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, and Mass Effect, was announced by its parent company Electronic Arts in October. (See my post about my love for the music of these games and my ode to Dragon Age: Origins.) Though the studio that made those classics no longer really existed, and hasn’t for a long time, it is still sad to see the once-great company extinguished for good.
Evidently, I am not the only one who feels this way, as a Canadian member of Parliament has sponsored a petition to “Provide BioWare with the capital necessary to secure independence of themselves and their intellectual property from Electronic Arts and resume business as an independent, Canadian company.” He even promoted the petition on Twitter with a picture of his head pasted onto the body of Mass Effect series icon Command Shepard.
Nationalizing the husk of a once-revered studio is a terrible idea, of course, but it is at least a funny one.