Electronic Arts closed BioWare this week, and the backlash did not wait for the weekend. The IGN post reporting the studio's closure, the cancellation of the next Mass Effect, and a fan push to boycott every EA product pulled 349.4K views, 11.6K likes, 1,529 reposts and 1,383 replies within days. An earlier outrage post about the shutdown — one that bolted on its own claims about why the studio died — nearly tripled it at 961.7K views. That culture claim belongs to the poster, not to the receipts. The receipts show something simpler: Electronic Arts has carried an 80/100 — extremely woke — on our 2,400-brand scoreboard for a long time. The real question gamers are asking now is not whether to be mad at EA. It is where their money goes if they walk. We pulled every score.
The EA file was thick long before BioWare closed
EA's 80 was no overnight reaction to one studio closure. The file shows a perfect 100 and an Equality 100 Award on the Human Rights Campaign's 2026 Corporate Equality Index — notable because EA stayed in the index while Fortune 500 participation collapsed by roughly 65 percent. The company still ships Pride content in The Sims and maintains an LGBTQ+ roster in Apex Legends, even as it has quietly scrubbed DEI language from its annual filings. That last part is the pattern worth watching across corporate America in 2026: keep the programs, drop the vocabulary. A boycott of EA's catalog is a clean consumer vote. Just go in knowing the score was already on the record — the closure did not create it.
The uncomfortable part: where would a boycotter actually go?
Here is where the fan boycott runs into a wall. The biggest names in gaming hardware and platforms score worse than EA — or match it. Microsoft is the only brand in our entire database with a perfect 100/100, hitting every one of our six criteria: annual sustainability reporting, a Global D&I division, Pride campaigns, a perfect CEI score, more than $25 million in political spending, and CEO Action signatory status. PlayStation sits at 90 — extremely woke — pairing a verified CEI 100 with nine consecutive years of Tokyo Rainbow Pride sponsorship, Pride@PlayStation employee networks, DEIB hiring goals, and OpenSecrets data showing roughly 95 percent of its 2024 party-coded giving went to Democrats. Xbox carries an 80, the same score as EA: a CEI 100 with Xbox named on it, an annual Pride merchandising and donation program that pledged an extra $100,000 to LGBTQ organizations in June 2025, and 2024-cycle contributions running roughly 84 percent Democratic. Even NVIDIA — the company whose chips power the rigs boycotters would build — scores 70, woke by our scale.
The publishers in the middle
The comparison shoppers do not have it much better. Activision Blizzard scores 55 and Take-Two Interactive also scores 55 — woke territory, not extreme. Ubisoft comes in at 45. None of them are clean; all of them are measurably less invested in the identity-program stack than the platform holders above them. If your boycott is about degrees rather than purity, this is the middle of the board.
The lowest score on the board belongs to Nintendo
Nintendo of America scores 45/100 — woke, but the shape of the score matters more than the number. Nintendo runs real DE&I programming: six employee resource groups, an ongoing Disrupting Everyday Bias course, DE&I awareness written into localization job criteria, and an annual CSR report. What it does not do is chase the trophy case. No perfect CEI badge flex, no annual Pride merchandising campaign, no six-figure June pledge on top of last year's. On a board where 80 is the going rate for the industry's biggest names, 45 with that profile is as close to a low score as console gaming gets. That is not an endorsement — it is arithmetic.
What the BioWare boycott is really up against
Boycotts work when there is somewhere to take the money. EA's situation is unusual: the company being boycotted scores 80, and the two platform ecosystems a boycotter would keep playing on score 100 and 90. You can drop EA's catalog tonight and still hand your subscription money to a worse scorer every month. That is exactly the decision our scoreboard exists to inform — not to tell you what to buy, but to show you what each purchase actually funds.
- Electronic Arts — 80, extremely woke. The boycott target. CEI 100 in 2026, Pride content in The Sims, DEI language scrubbed from filings but programs intact.
- Microsoft — 100, extremely woke. The only perfect score in the database. Every one of our six criteria.
- PlayStation — 90, extremely woke. Nine straight years of Tokyo Rainbow Pride sponsorship, ~95% Democratic giving.
- Xbox — 80, extremely woke. Matches EA. CEI 100 with Xbox named, $100K Pride pledge in June 2025.
- NVIDIA — 70, woke. The hardware layer under almost every alternative.
- Activision Blizzard / Take-Two — 55 each, woke. The middle of the publisher board.
- Ubisoft / Nintendo — 45 each, woke. The lowest scores in a high-scoring industry.
The takeaway
The 961.7K-view post and the 349.4K-view post disagree on why BioWare died. They do not disagree that it is gone, and neither changes what EA has been for years. If this week's news is your reason to re-rank your gaming dollars, do it with the full board in front of you — not just the row everyone is yelling about. Every score above is pulled from our scored database, and every profile page shows the receipts behind the number. Browse the rest of the video games category, check a brand before you renew a subscription, and remember that in this industry the outrage target is rarely the worst scorer on your shelf.