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One week after revealing that Dragon Age: The Veilguard significantly underperformed by missing its sales expectations by nearly 50%, Electronic Arts has announced that “many” of the studio’s employees have been moved to other EA teams as part of an effort to make the company—you guessed it—”more agile.”
“Now that Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been released, a core team at BioWare is developing the next Mass Effect game under the leadership of veterans from the original trilogy, including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, Parrish Ley, and others,” BioWare general manager Gary McKay wrote. “In keeping with our fierce commitment to innovating during the development and delivery of Mass Effect, we have challenged ourselves to think deeply about delivering the best experience to our fans. We are taking this opportunity between full development cycles to reimagine how we work at BioWare.
“Given this stage of development, we don’t require support from the full studio. We have incredible talent here at BioWare, and so we have worked diligently over the past few months to match many of our colleagues with other teams at EA that had open roles that were a strong fit. Today’s news will see BioWare become a more agile, focused studio that produces unforgettable RPGs. We appreciate your support as we build a new future for BioWare.”
Electronic Arts declined to comment on the possibility of layoffs on top of the transfers: In a statement provided to IGN, an EA rep said only that BioWare’s “full focus is Mass Effect,” adding, “While we’re not sharing numbers, the studio has the right number of people in the right roles to work on Mass Effect at this stage of development.”
However, multiple BioWare employees said on social media after the announcement went live that they’d been laid off. Long-time employees Karin and Trick Weekes, well known for their work as writers and editors on the Mass Effect and Dragon Age games, also revealed today that they’re no longer with the studio, although whether they were laid off or left voluntarily wasn’t specified. Either way, it represents a big loss of respected veteran talent.
None of this bodes well for the future of BioWare, one of EA’s most prestigious studios. Dragon Age: The Veilguard now appears to be fully finished—today’s announcement seems to confirm that its most recent update, released last week, will indeed be its last—while it sounds like Mass Effect 5, which was confirmed in 2020, is still wallowing in pre-production.
This is actually BioWare’s second recent run at agility and focus, two words that have been adopted by industry executives in recent years to justify putting large numbers of people out of work. In August 2023 the studio laid off roughly 50 employees, a move announced by McKay with remarkably similar wording: “In order to meet the needs of our upcoming projects, continue to hold ourselves to the highest standard of quality, and ensure BioWare can continue to thrive in an industry that’s rapidly evolving, we must shift towards a more agile and more focused studio,” he said at the time. It apparently didn’t work then, but maybe it’ll work this time.
We may learn more about the future of BioWare next week: EA’s third-quarter financial results and investors conference call, where such things are sometimes talked about, are scheduled for February 4.
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Kurt Indovina
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