Founders Zeschuk and Mayuka quit BioWare

BioWare founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka have quit EA-owned studio BioWare.

The developer’s credits include sci-fi trilogy Mass Effect and recent MMO release Star Wars: The Old Republic.

It appeared as if the pair had quit the studio last month, though the claims were at the time denied.

After nearly twenty years working at BioWare I’ve decided it’s time to move on and pursue something new,” Zeschuk stated. This decision isn’t without significant pain and regret, but it’s also something I know I need to do, for myself and my family. I’ve reached an unexpected point in my life where I no longer have the passion that I once did for the company, for the games, and for the challenge of creation.

Some of you will be curious what I’ll be doing next, and I can state that I’m not going to be working in games for a while, and there’s a strong possibility that I won’t be back. After my departure I’m going to be spending significant time with family and friends, as well as pursuing some personal passion-driven projects related to craft beer. The main project I will be working on is a web-based interview show called The Beer Diaries where I interview notable brewers and showcase their beers.”

Having thanked his co-workers and fellow co-founder Muzyka, Zeschuk also made a point of thanking his current employers.

I’d also like to thank EA for the amazing support we’ve received in recent years,” he added. Working with John Riccitiello, Frank Gibeau, Peter Moore and the rest of the EA team was a great experience and their support was essential in us being able to achieve our creative goals with Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Thanks to the team at Electronic Arts we had an amazing run. I’ve had the great fortune of making a number of lifelong friends within EA that I’ll always cherish; happily I leave this experience with great people to remember it by.”

Muzyka published an equally lengthy departure letter.

After nearly two decades in video games, I’ve decided to move on to pursue an entirely different set of challenges,” he stated. This has been an incredibly difficult decision to make; after thinking about it for many months, I made the decision to retire from video games back in early April 2012 – at that time I provided six months’ notice to EA, to help enable a solid transition for my teams at BioWare.

The decision to leave the videogame industry is hard to explain, but essentially I feel similar now to how I felt in the early days of BioWare over the decade post-medical school, while I was still practicing as an ER physician, back when I first realised that the world of video games was my next career ‘chapter’. Two wonderful decades working at BioWare and later EA was the result of that decision. It’s not often that you can truly say you were able to pursue and achieve your dream job; I know how lucky I am to be able to say that now, in my early 40s.

I feel the need now to move on to a new chapter in my career. With the growth of BioWare to multiple locations as part of a public company, following two decades of multiple successful product launches across many platforms and business models, I’ve largely personally achieved what I wanted in video games; I now desire to take on a brand new entrepreneurial challenge. I believe strongly in the power of free enterprise to enable sustainable change, so my next ‘chapter’ will likely focus on an entirely new industry, something exciting, different and frankly downright scary – investing in and mentoring new entrepreneurs, and more specifically, the field of social/impact investing.

The past five+ years at EA have been very good for me personally. I’ve learned a lot about navigating successfully within a larger publicly traded company, working with – and continually being inspired by – a large, passionate team across many locations. My teams and I have benefited tremendously from the mentorship, wisdom and continuous strong support of EA’s leadership team in EA’s President Frank Gibeau, COO Peter Moore and CEO John Riccitiello, among many others; the company and its management team have been consistently supportive of BioWare’s culture and commitment to quality and creativity.”