I had heard elsewhere that the decision to give live service a go came from Bioware’s own leadership and was not thrust upon them by EA.

I can imagine a universe where Bioware stuck with scripted single player RPGs and faded along with the genre. In which case we might have been at the same point by now, just with a different list of games to use as conversation fodder.

I heard elsewhere - I forget the name of the journalist - that the real root cause was that EA pushed for a yearly release cadence like they’re used to with their sports and sim titles. That version of the story has Bioware juat generally struggling to adapt, and the specific questionable decisions are just symptoms of the underlying problem.

I like it because it fits nicely with the immediate situation: 50 people working on a game that will need a huge headcount ramp-up and multiple years to ship, and EA just deciding they would rather put their money into a more immediate payoff.