Electronic Arts to lay off 400 staff, shut down BioWare [Update]

Electronic Arts will lay off staff and close BioWare, the developer behind the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, the company said.

Approximately 400 employees will be laid off, representing about three percent of its total workforce, including roughly 50 at BioWare, a person familiar with the company’s plans told Bloomberg.

In a letter to staff sent out today, Electronic Arts chief operating officer David Tinson and chief studios officer Cam Weber said that “over the past several months, we’ve taken a hard look at our business” and cancel some projects, including the next Mass Effect game, which was in early development at BioWare.

A new game in The Sims franchise, code-named “Project Lotus,” was also canceled, while a different project code-named “Project Evergreen” will continue development. The free-to-play skate. will also continue development, but the team behind it will be downsized.

Electronic Arts said it will continue to invest in sports games, Apex Legends, and action-adventure projects such as the next Star Wars Jedi game and a new Marvel’s Iron Man game. The Battlefield franchise will also continue, and Respawn Entertainment and DICE will collaborate on a new project that Bloomberg reports is likely a new Star Wars: Battlefront title. (Update: Star Wars: Battlefront III is in active development at Electronic Arts, according to a Variety report citing “multiple sources.”)

Here is the full statement from BioWare on its closure:

For more than 30 years, BioWare has been more than a studio. It has been a home for storytellers, developers, and the players who brought our worlds to life.

Baldur’s Gate. Neverwinter Nights. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Dragon Age. Mass Effect. Anthem.

Now, after more than three decades of shared adventures, BioWare is closing and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending.

There is nothing easy about writing those words. Our focus right now is on our incredibly talented team who put their hearts into these games, and supporting one another through this transition.

What generations of BioWare built together is something to celebrate and remember. These games became so much more because you played them, debated your choices, fell in love with the characters, and made these worlds your own.

From all of us at BioWare, thank you for being the most meaningful part of our story.

Update 1:35 p.m.: Here is the full letter to staff from Tinson and Weber:

Hi Team,

First, thank you.

Through every major moment we’ve faced as a company, your commitment to creating awesome games and experiences for our players continues to be impressive. Together, we’ve built epic worlds and global communities that are part of the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Today, we’re the number one publisher in Western HD gaming. That’s an extraordinary position to lead from, and one we should be proud of. Yet our industry is changing quickly. Players have more choices than ever for their time and attention, competition is intensifying, and some of our biggest opportunities for growth are beyond the markets, platforms, and business models where EA has traditionally been the strongest.

That’s why, over the past several months, we’ve taken a hard look at our business, how we operate, and what it will take to lead in this next era of interactive entertainment. We’ve challenged assumptions, confronted hard realities, imagined new possibilities, and made deliberate choices in order to deliver exceptional experiences for our players and to drive sustained growth.

We believe our best creative work happens when we’re clear about what matters most for our players and give our teams the freedom to move quickly. So, we’re concentrating our teams, technology, and investment behind these three strategic priorities.

• Deepen Our Core – Our greatest opportunity starts with our franchises and global communities that have made EA a leader in interactive entertainment. This is where we’ve had to make our hardest choices. Saying no to some things we’re passionate about allows us to focus our teams and resources so we give our biggest opportunities everything they need to succeed.
• Expand Our Reach – The strength of our core business creates an enormous opportunity to reach more players across new platforms, markets, and business models. As one example, in regions as dynamic as Asia, success means building experiences that reflect local players, cultures, and expectations.
• Transform Our Business – We believe we can use our experience building interactive entertainment, together with our relationships in sports, to create entirely new ways for fans to engage with the teams, athletes and sports they love. These will be disciplined investments that only scale when they demonstrate real potential.

These priorities will bring clarity and focus to your work every day, and so will the way we work. We’ve spent time listening to teams about what’s working, what’s getting in the way, and what you need to do your best work. The feedback was consistent: you want clearer priorities, faster decisions, and teams that work more closely together. We’ve already begun simplifying how we work so we can spend more time creating and innovating for our players.

Our Portfolio Choices

Across our portfolio, we’re making deliberate choices to align talent and investments where we see the greatest opportunities for players and long-term growth.

In our Shooters business, Battlefield 6 was a great success, and we learned a lot from the launch and the live service. We’re going to take those learnings, balance our resources, and leverage the technology to deliver a shooter portfolio that unlocks growth. In addition to our future Battlefield titles, we’ll be bringing together our Respawn and DICE studios to collaborate on a future project that will help us achieve that ambition. We can’t wait to share more when the time comes. We’re also continuing to invest heavily in Apex over the next few years by introducing brand new gameplay modes in multiplayer, and other new experiences, to expand the universe.

Action-adventure is one of the most competitive and high-stakes genres in the industry, where every game needs our full weight behind it. We’re continuing to deliver on our two huge launches coming up with Marvel’s Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game. Beyond that, we will concentrate our efforts on fewer simultaneous, large-scale projects, ensuring that every game we build in this space is fully set up for success.

As we focus on these larger opportunities, we’ve had a small team at BioWare working on early-development for Mass Effect. We’ve made the decision not to move forward with this development, which means we’re closing the studio and our Edmonton workspace. BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we do not take this decision lightly.

EA SPORTS continues to operate from a position of strength. We are fully committed and investing in the global growth of our FC franchise and across the full EA SPORTS portfolio. We have two new projects in development you’ll hear about over the next few months, including a brand-new, social-first open-world experience for our American Football team that we call “Project Gridiron,” and we are also in pre-production to bring back a beloved, fan-favorite in Fight Night, leveraging capabilities from our simulation fighting team.

In Lifestyle, we’re focusing on the long-term potential of The Sims and skate. We’re going to prioritize our efforts on “Project Evergreen” for The Sims to give the team more time to reach the full potential and vision for the game, and to help make this possible, we’re pausing development on “Project Lotus.” For skate., we’ve had a lot of success in bringing players into the game, and we need to create an experience that keeps them engaged over the long-term. To do that, we are making changes to the studio to have a more focused, smaller team to deliver on a very clear roadmap for our community that we believe will build a healthier and more sustainable business.

Building the EA We Believe In

The decisions we’re making in our priorities, how we work, and with our portfolio reflect our belief in EA’s future. Some open exciting new possibilities. Others are difficult, especially for the people and teams across the company who are directly affected. In those cases, we will support impacted employees in exploring other opportunities within EA, and we’re committed to treating impacted colleagues with care and respect.

We’re sure there will be questions about what these changes mean for individual teams and for EA more broadly. You can speak directly with your leaders to hear more on that, and we’ll make sure to spend time discussing our direction and the work ahead at our next Global Town Hall in November.

The past several months have strengthened our belief in what EA can become. We have extraordinary people, franchises that matter to millions of players, and opportunities to build experiences we’ve only begun to imagine.

Our responsibility is to make the choices, provide the clarity, and create the conditions for our teams to do their best work. We also want to give every game we choose to build its best chance to succeed for our players and fans around the world.

We look forward to building more great games and experiences together.

Thanks,

Cam & David