One of BioWare’s famous founding doctors, Greg Zeschuk, finally spoke out about the studio’s closure last week, saying it was “a little sad” and that the leveraged buyout of EA by a Saudi consortium “was the final nail in the coffin.”
Speaking to 80 Level, Zeschuk – who founded BioWare in 1995 with fellow medical students Ray Muzyka and Augustine Yip – said he was fishing when news of the studio’s closure broke. “I got about 10 text messages,” Zeschuk said. “I got out of the river, got to my little room and opened my phone and was like, ‘I’m so sorry to hear about BioWare.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh shit.'”
By the time he returned home later, he had apparently already digested the news and missed most of the speeches about it. “I wasn’t there to share that moment,” he said, “which in some ways was good because I was able to take my time.
“I kind of went through all the emotions a long, long time ago” -Greg Zeschuk
“I’m not saying it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t suck,” he added. “And I think that’s a little sad. Actually, in a way, it’s even sadder for the city of Edmonton, where we’re from, because we were kind of a beacon of hope and enthusiasm and possibility. We showed that you could do something really special in a place that wasn’t known for doing things like that.”
Zeschuk and Muzyka retired from BioWare in 2012, the year Mass Effect 3 was released, so they were away from the company for a considerable amount of time. They moved on. “I kind of went through all the emotions a long, long time ago,” Zeschuk explained.
BioWare subsequently changed, it seemed to accept it, but as a result of a gradual change caused naturally by people leaving and other people arriving. “I’m not going to have so much hubris to say that Ray and I were the kingpin of the chain, our departure ruined everything,” he said. “It wasn’t that at all. It’s a slow, insidious thing and again, it’s people. People are the key.”
When he learned that EA’s private acquisition had been completed, he feared things could go wrong. “I think that was the final nail in the coffin,” he said. “I think that was the crux in a sense. BioWare makes these kinds of unusual games that take a long time and are complicated. So it’s easier to release sports games every year, and it’s a better business model in some ways.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Zeschuk talked a bit about the origins of BioWare’s sale to EA in 2008 – “We had options actually” – and his personal move away from story-driven games towards more action-focused 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 about 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 refused to be interviewed. BioWare’s third co-founder, Augustine Yip, left the company a long time ago, in 1998.
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