Electronic Arts Slashes BioWare After ‘Dragon Age’ Sales Miss
The studio has shrunk to less than 100 people following the release of
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed EA’s sales expectations by 50%, leading to cuts at the studio
Source: Electronic Arts
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By
Jason Schreier
31 de janeiro de 2025 at 16:30 BRT
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Hi everyone. Today we’re diving into the cuts at Electronic Arts Inc.’s BioWare, which were deeper than have been reported, but first...
This week’s top gaming news:
BioWare magic
Late last year, after the release of the new role-playing game
Dragon Age: The Veilguard, dozens of employees at developer BioWare were given some staffing news. Moving forward, they were going to be loaned out to other teams within their parent company, Electronic Arts, where they would work on various upcoming games like
Iron Man and
Skate.
The logic made sense. BioWare’s next game, a new installment in the popular sci-fi
Mass Effect series, was in pre-production and did not need the entire studio. There were no other internal projects for everyone to work on. Instead of getting laid off, they would stay employed, working on other projects until
Mass Effect was ready for them.
But this week, the group was informed that the loans had morphed into permanent relocations, according to people familiar with what happened. They were no longer BioWare employees who were temporarily on assignment elsewhere; now, they worked for whichever EA subsidiary had borrowed them. If they want to work at BioWare again in the future, they would have to look for job openings and re-apply.
This was an unwelcome development for some of the employees, who now find themselves on brand-new teams at studios they’d never planned to join. Some had come to BioWare to work on storied role-playing game franchises and found the idea of working on action or sports games less appealing.
But at least they got to keep their jobs. During the same reorganization this week, around two dozen other people at BioWare were laid off, according to the people familiar, who asked not to be identified discussing nonpublic information. Writer
Trick Weekes and producer
Jen Cheverie said on Bluesky that they were among the veteran workers who’d been cut.
BioWare is now down from more than 200 people two years ago to less than 100 today, according to the people familiar. A small team will remain to work on the next
Mass Effect game — led by company veterans who oversaw the development on the original trilogy as well as on 2019’s
Anthem — in hopes of expanding as the game gets further into production.
The company
announced the reorganization on Wednesday, saying it planned to “become a more agile, focused studio,” without mentioning the job cuts and the relocation of staff permanently to other studios. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment on specific numbers.
It’s been a rough month for EA. Last week, the company’s shares plunged 18% after reporting preliminary holiday-season results that missed estimates and
lowering its forecast for the fiscal year. The poor results were largely due to the underperformance of EA’s latest soccer game but the company also said that
Dragon Age: The Veilguard reached 1.5 million players, missing sales expectations by 50%.
What may be most surprising is that EA, which has a long history of
shuttering studios after a failure, is keeping BioWare around. The once-revered RPG studio, founded in 1995 by a trio of doctors, released a string of beloved titles throughout the 1990s and 2000s, including the first two
Baldur’s Gate games,
Dragon Age: Origins and the
Mass Effect trilogy. But the studio has failed to release a hit since 2014’s
Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Mass Effect: Andromeda, released in 2017, received mediocre reviews and was widely criticized for its bugs and uncanny animations. BioWare then pivoted to a live-service shooter with 2019’s
Anthem, which was roundly panned and killed after less than two years. Both games were plagued by management issues, brutal deadline crunches and a belief — called “
BioWare magic” — that everything would work out in the end.
With the single-player
Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which had its own
turbulent development cycle and was rebooted multiple times, the studio hoped to win back lapsed fans. Despite generally positive reviews, the game proved to be divisive among players, with some criticizing the writing, art style and linear level design.
But many observers and staff blame EA for the situation they put BioWare in — canceling an early version of
Dragon Age in favor of one that would be required to have a “live-service” multiplayer component with recurring revenue, only to then reverse course, reverting once again back to the single-player format. It would be difficult for most game-makers to release something great under those conditions.
Now, BioWare studio head Gary McKay and
Mass Effect executive producer Mike Gamble are essentially looking to reboot the company as they plunge forward on their next game. It will be a long road ahead, and what emerges will be a very different BioWare. But at least for now, the studio will continue.
What to play this weekend
Speaking of BioWare, there’s a new game out helmed by the creative director of
Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mike Laidlaw, who left the RPG studio in 2017.
Eternal Strands, an action-RPG that allows players to manipulate elements like fire and ice to cause havoc and take down bosses, seems like a promising way to spend the weekend. I’ve only played a bit so far, but
Stephen Totilo at Game File has raved about it, which makes me want to devote more time to experimenting with its chaotic systems.
You can reach Jason at
jschreier10@bloomberg.net or confidentially at
jasonschreier@protonmail.com.
