After announcing that BioWare is being downsized, with some staff moved to other studios, a new report says that said staff didn’t know the move would be permanent.
Earlier this week, BioWare essentially announced some layoffs without calling them layoffs, the wording particularly obtuse considering seemingly none of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s main writing team is at the studio anymore. At the time of the announcement, BioWare said it had “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,” but a new report from Bloomsberg has shed some light on the situation. As stated by BioWare, staff from the studio have been moved to other studios, but according to sources Bloomsberg spoke with, while the “loans” were just meant to be temporary, they now appear to be permanent.
Bloomberg explained that those that would want to work at BioWare again would only be able to do so by applying to any job openings that become available in the future. Unsurprisingly, this news hasn’t been popular with a lot of employees, given they’re now on new teams at studios they had never intended to work at. Some even noted that they specifically wanted to work at BioWare so they could work on RPGs, and don’t particularly like the idea of being assigned to action or sports games.
Quite notably, this rearrangement of staff and layoffs has led the studio to be cut in half, with the headcount being 200 hundred a couple of years ago, now at 100. The remaining staff are currently working on Mass Effect 5, which I imagine will now be something of a hail Mary given the bomb that was Anthem. Fingers crossed the game pulls through for a studio that has long been recognised as a developer to aspire to be like.