Fan Builds a “Graveyard” of Closed Studios Outside EA’s Vancouver Office

After BioWare’s closure, one fan decided to pay tribute in his own way to the studios Electronic Arts has shut down over the years. On Halloween night, he set up seven homemade gravestones outside EA’s office in Vancouver, each with a studio’s name, its years of operation, and an epitaph. The author shared photos of the memorial and his thoughts on Reddit.

As you can see in the photos, there are seven gravestones outside the office. Each epitaph references the studio’s best-known games:

• BioWare (1995–2026): “It had to be Me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.” These are Mordin Solus’s words from Mass Effect 3.
• Bullfrog (1987–2001): “Godhood was not enough.” A nod to Populous, the game that started the “god game” genre.
• Pandemic (1988–2009): “War is my business.” The studio made Mercenaries and the first two Star Wars: Battlefront games.
• Origin (1983–2004): “The worlds are ended. The dream lives on.” The studio behind the Ultima and Wing Commander series.
• Visceral (1998–2017): “Once space; now dead.” A play on words in honor of Dead Space.
• Maxis (1987–2014): “They cut back funding, and they regretted it.” A reference to the advisors in SimCity.
• Westwood (1985–2003): “I live in death.” A rephrased Kane quote from Command & Conquer.

That said, the fan didn’t quite get it right with Maxis. EA did close Maxis’s main studio in Emeryville, where SimCity was made, but that happened in early 2015. The Maxis brand itself still exists, and The Sims is released under it.

The memorial’s author said that with BioWare’s closure, “a little something something in me snapped.” EA has had offices in the city for decades, but this year he decided something more had to be done. Cutting, painting, and printing the gravestones took him a whole day. He also wanted to add Mythic and Black Box but ran out of time, since, in his words, the memorial had to go up that night and no later.

He admitted that some of the studios had management problems and might have gone under on their own if EA hadn’t bought them. BioWare, for example, relied for years on so-called “BioWare magic,” expecting everything to come together at the last moment. In his view, though, EA didn’t help either: it forced the studio to make Dragon Age: The Veilguard a live service game in its early years, mandated an engine for Mass Effect: Andromeda that was unsuitable for RPG systems, and shuffled staff over to FIFA.

“Expecting that every game would be a blockbuster is in my mind a bit insane. Some games will resonate and land hard. Others just won’t. But running an ‘up or out’ management process inevitably has everyone out.”

On October 22, EA announced the closure of BioWare after more than 30 years. The next Mass Effect was canceled along with the studio, and EA laid off around 400 employees in total. BioWare created iconic series such as Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age.