EA Gave “Too Big to Fail” Games Like Battlefield 4 and The Sims 4 Time to Recover — BioWare’s Anthem Wasn’t Guaranteed the Same

Beyond sales history, Darrah argues the studio structure mattered more. BioWare’s identity is built on established single-player franchises like Dragon Age, Baldur’s Gate and Mass Effect. When an experimental project such as Anthem falters, the studio can return to its more reliable IPs instead of doubling down on the new title.

By contrast, in 2013 DICE faced a starker choice: fix Battlefield 4 or risk the studio’s future. According to Darrah, EA historically hesitated to close studios, so there was stronger pressure to allocate resources to DICE. At BioWare, competing projects often vie for the same talent, and when one project underperforms, resources can be siphoned away to other priorities.

What Happened on Anthem – Part 3 Post Launch, Wishes, and Recommendations – YouTube

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Few people speak with as much inside knowledge about Anthem’s collapse as Darrah, and his multi-part video post-mortem explores the game’s flawed multiplayer systems, its weak narrative, and EA’s hesitancy to commit the time and resources BioWare would have needed to recover the project.