BioWare's future under EA in question, studio veteran warns, if it makes "the kind of games that this new company isn't interested in making anymore"

BioWare veteran Mark Darrah has discussed the $55bn private acquisition of EA and what the future holds for the RPG studio, suggesting it could be sold to pay off debt.

The buyout, announced earlier this week, is by a group of investors comprising Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and investment firms Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. Of the $55bn, $36bn is in equity with the remaining $20bn in JPMorgan debt, which EA will need to cover.

In his latest YouTube video, Darrah (best known as a producer across the Dragon Age games) suggested EA may be looking to sell off some of its biggest IPs and studios in order to service that debt.

Darrah explained EA is incentivised not to take risks, and selling off an IP only for it to become a huge success elsewhere would be a notable risk. Doing nothing “keeps them from getting into trouble”, but now that incentive could be completely flipped to drive immediate revenue.

“EA has a huge repository of dormant IPs that are just sitting there dormant,” said Darrah. “It seems unlikely that the new resulting structure is going to be eager to suddenly revive a bunch of those IPs.

“So one option might be to sell the whole lot of them for a hundred million dollars if you can get it, because a hundred million dollars can come off the debt. You might even see them toying with the idea of shedding some of their existing studios. Maybe they shut them down, but maybe they look for opportunities to sell off entire studios, or entire groups.”