Today we are thrilled to announce that Age of Empires is partnering with the world’s most-visited museum, the Louvre in Paris!

On April 30^th, the Louvre launched an exhibition on the Mamluk sultanate (1250-1517), a European first. The exhibition aims to share the story of this golden age of the Islamic Near East, showcasing its breadth and richness, all told from a transregional perspective. The Mamluks appear in three Age of Empires titles and players around the world have discovered their prowess and story through our games since 1999.

With a shared passion for history at its heart, this collaboration between Age of Empires and the Louvre serves to share the story of the Mamluks to people around the world and encourage them to learn more about this golden age of medieval history, which isn’t often told.

Throughout the month of June, we’ll be collaborating both at the museum in Paris and online. For an overview of our collaboration, check our dedicated webpage.

Age of Empires Becomes the Louvre's First Gaming Partnership - Age of Empires - World's Edge Studio

I think we're going to see a ton of releases in the early part of the year. Possibly a record amount. I mean maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like if I was running a publisher, I wanna get my game out before GTA drops, cus that's just gonna swallow all the oxygen in the room. And it'll do it not once, but twice. First when the main game releases, and then again when they open up GTA Online 2.0 or whatever they call it. 

I'm not trying to compete with the broader audience on time with that. If you get your game out ahead of it, even if it's a really big game and they have to take a break from it to go play GTA, at least you did your numbers and made your money. We all know the majority of game sales (that aren't on deep discounts down the road) are super frontloaded. I'd say anything up to like May 10th or so I'd be very happy to release something. 

Big story coming shortly

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social) 11 June 2025 at 13:32

Industry is so fucked that when Jason posts something like this now all I feel is dread, Lmao.

The Outer Worlds 2 is looking like it'll be Obsidian's best RPG ever.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzLL...

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— Greg Miller (@gameovergreggy.bsky.social) 10 June 2025 at 19:17

The Outer Worlds 2 could be Obsidian's best RPG to date. #theouterworlds #theouterworlds2 #xbox #sgf #obsidian

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— Greg Miller (@gameovergreggy.bsky.social) 10 June 2025 at 22:36

what was ist about? Post disappeared

Jason posted "Big story coming shortly"

It was about Dragon Age.

NEW: What went wrong with Dragon Age: The Veilguard? Why was the writing so tonally inconsistent? Why did it feel so shallow? Why were there so few choices?

Really, after ten years of turbulence, it was a miracle that anything came out at all. This is the story: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

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— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social) 11 June 2025 at 14:32

In 2023, to help finish Dragon Age, BioWare brought in a second, internal team, which was working on the next Mass Effect game. For decades there’d been tension between the two well-established camps, known for their starkly divergent ways of doing things. BioWare developers like to joke that the Dragon Age crew was like a pirate ship, meandering and sometimes traveling off course but eventually reaching the port. In contrast, the Mass Effect group was called the USS Enterprise, after the Star Trek ship, because commands were issued straight down from the top and executed zealously.

As the Mass Effect directors took control, they scoffed that the Dragon Age squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings, according to people familiar with the internal friction. Over time, the Mass Effect team went on to overhaul parts of the game and design a number of additional scenes, including a rich, emotional finale that players loved. But even changes that appeared to improve the game stoked the simmering rancor inside BioWare, infuriating Dragon Age leaders who had been told they didn’t have the budget for such big, ambitious swings.

“It always seemed that, when the Mass Effect team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,” said David Gaider, a former lead writer on the Dragon Age franchise who left before development of the new game started. “But Dragon Age always had to fight against headwinds.”

Early testers and Mass Effect leads complained about the game’s snarky tone — a style of video-game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman’s vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that Dragon Age could face the same outcome as Forspoken — a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter — BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game’s dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game’s poor reception with fans.)

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I found this part interesting. We heard about clashes between the core Mass Effect team and the Andromeda team too, it seems like they can be a bit rude but they know what they're doing. However EA has favouritism towards the core Mass Effect team so it's easier for them to be arrogant when EA gives them everything but not the Dragon Age team or even the spinoff Andromeda team.

It gives me more optimism for Mass Effect but it didn't have to be like this, Bioware's studios come across like feuding siblings who are complete opposites and the parent only inflames things by having favouritism towards one of the siblings, Lol. Sure, Mass Effect team tried to correct some of the creative mistakes but at the same time, Dragon Age team has to fight for their budget while the Mass Effect team get whatever they want so that's obviously going to constrain the Dragon Age team as well.

Christ is this what will happen if Todd Howard ever splits up Bethesda to work on specific IPs? Lmao.

Bethesda Austin takes over Fallout, Bethesda Maryland takes over Elder Scrolls, and they suddenly start squabbling, Lol.

What EA has done to Bioware over the years is honestly so fucking tragic. It's really a teachable blueprint of how to sink an all time great developer.

The fatal flaw for Dragon Age: The Veilguard wasn't just that it pivoted from single-player to multiplayer and back again. It was that after the second pivot, the team was forced to keep going rather than hit the reset button and take the time to create a new plan. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

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— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social) 11 June 2025 at 15:19

The Mass Effect team would have been allowed though I bet, Lol.

One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whisky. The next Dragon Age sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game — a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved.

"I wish that pivot had never occurred," Darrah would later recount on YouTube. "EA said, 'Make this a live service.' We said, 'We don't know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.'"

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So if I have this right, EA forced Bioware to turn Dragon Age, a SP RPG into an online live-service title, it obviously didn't work out because the Dragon Age team has zero experience with that and Dragon Age was not set up to be that, things are a mess and so EA finally relents and allows a change in direction but they only give the Dragon Age team a year and a half to reboot the entire fundamentals.

Meanwhile, at the end, EA drags the Mass Effect team in, who proceed to ice out the Dragon Age team and essentially tell them how shit their work is, which was largely not the fault of the Dragon Age team, the Mass Effect team salvages what they can on short notice and do make some good changes, but the Dragon Age team becomes understandably upset about EA's favouritism because things the Mass Effect team request are given to them in an instant but Dragon Age team was told no.

Just a mess all round, EA's going to cause these two studios to start strangling each other soon.