The Day That the World Breaks Down: BioWare and PHP
Posted on October 21, 2026 by Aywren
The title of this post borrowed from an incredible piece of music. If you’ve never heard this masterpiece before, give it a listen!
I don’t usually like to write about negative things, but I’m idling here waiting on the FFXIV login servers to come back up after being down for several hours due to emergency maintenance thanks to a massive PHP security breach. SO. This is what you get from me today.
So much has been breaking down lately. I’ll talk about the two currently happening, but there’s just been untold numbers of layoffs, increasing corporate greed, loss of ownership and physical media, hobby costs skyrocketing thanks to AI, and onwards.
Massive PHP Security Vulnerability
Today, much of the net was shut down for emergency maintenance thanks to a critical PHP vulnerability. In fact, I’m surprised that WordPress is up right now considering.
Just another reason I’m glad none of my sites (nor Neocities) rely on PHP. I remember the days of hosting on other sites and it was often the case that the hosts were so behind in PHP versions that something like this would have been massively crippling.
Anyhow, I’m sure companies will responsibly patch their stuff (right?). It’s just interesting how something like this can take down so many sites – out of needing to update and apply the security patch, of course. I’d rather see them do that than go down to a hack any day.
The Fate of BioWare and Concern for Maxis
The other sad news has to do with EA dismantling the entire BioWare studio. Just two hours ago, this was posted to the BioWare Twitter account:
Incredibly sad, but not completely unexpected due to the EA buyout. I wrote about my concerns as it pertains to The Sims and Maxis – which seem to have been spared this fate. But I wonder for how long.
While I haven’t been monetarily supporting Sims since the buyout, I still don’t want to see Maxis go the way of BioWare, either. It does sound like they are going to be trimming the team size down as they’ve already put what was once Project Rene on the backburner to focus on “Project Evergreen” instead.
It’s rough times for all, it seems.
Some Slightly Hopeful News
On a happier note, as one who has also been affected by corporate layoffs myself, I might finally have a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t want to talk too much about this as there’s nothing fully confirmed yet. I’ll just say that I’m coming closer to securing a job than I have in several months of job hunting.
Wish me luck! What I’m trying to swing would be a wonderful opportunity for me, I think. Likely hard work, but right now, I’ll take work over no work!
Please, take care of yourselves out there! It’s been a crazy week.