BioWare was once the gold standard for Western RPGs but is now down to fewer than 100 employees following EA’s latest wave of layoffs. Over 200 people worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and Bioware had up to 500 staff at it's peak. Now, a skeleton crew are working on the next Mass Effect game, which is reported to not be in full production yet.
It's reported that EA had already started shifting staff to other studios even before Veilguard missed its sales targets, and those transfers have now become permanent cuts to the studio. It's easy to blame EA for this. Don't we always. Everything they touch turns to shit. But BioWare’s been in freefall for over a decade. From Mass Effect 3 onwards it’s been studio interference, live service pivots, and mismanaged projects. Now it’s barely a studio at all.
Did EA kill BioWare? Or was this always going to happen the second they got bought out?
It's reported that EA had already started shifting staff to other studios even before Veilguard missed its sales targets, and those transfers have now become permanent cuts to the studio. It's easy to blame EA for this. Don't we always. Everything they touch turns to shit. But BioWare’s been in freefall for over a decade. From Mass Effect 3 onwards it’s been studio interference, live service pivots, and mismanaged projects. Now it’s barely a studio at all.
Did EA kill BioWare? Or was this always going to happen the second they got bought out?