The basic economic angle of it is that video games are a hit-driven business. Large publishers especially during the 1990s have a diverse product portfolio that can cushion moderate failures with the income from hits (more so during the 90s than today). When a small studio is growing its games and budgets to keep up with player expectations, the relative safety of a publisher can be tempting compared to sticking it out independently and betting the company on each game.
Yeah, but you'd think that studios that made plenty of hits in the 90s and early 2000s would be kept as they are in hopes that they make more hits—even as subsidiaries. The publisher financed the games before, after all. But no, afaict it's the same story every time: after several years, the publisher revs up the old blender, reassigns the studio's sub-outlets to its existing regional divisions, moves people around, and either renames the studio to ‘BigPublisher RegionName’, or shuts it down.
Also iirc there's a running theme of ‘we solemnly promise that the studio keeps the creative control after the acquisition,’ from both companies.
Didn't Id get absorbed into the ZeniMax/Bethesda giant?
I'm not following the industry too well now, but it seemed to me that Id kept its autonomy even as a subsidiary. Pretty sure they are doing just FPSes anyway.
BioWare is an EA studio since the release of Mass Effect 2.
My hypothesis, of course, is that very few people can keep delivering for twenty years. But still I can't help thinking―what it'd be like if Psygnosis taught a generation of rookies their way and did something other than F1 and Wipeout after 2000.