EA announces 400 layoffs and shuts down BioWare

Electronic Arts announced big layoffs cutting 400 jobs, and it said it is shutting down the struggling BioWare studio.

It’s a big shoe to drop in the wake of the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund-led $55 billion takeover of EA earlier this year. A big part of that money came from JP Morgan in the form of debt, and reducing costs is key to making EA profitable enough to pay off the debt.

However, EA did not bring that up in the announcement, nor did it say how many were laid off. But we heard the number was 400 people, as did Bloomberg. EA said in its most recent quarter that it had 14,500 people.

EA said that, 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 entertainnment.”

In the note from execs Cam Weber and David Tinson, they added, “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.”

Beyond the Mass Effect and full BioWare studios, there were also big cuts at The Sims and Battlefield studios.

The leaders said, “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.”

They said that EA is concentrating its efforts in three main areas.

“We’re concentrating our teams, technology, and investment behind these three strategic priorities,” they said. They include:

• 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.

The net of that is that EA will invest in franchises like Battlefield and Apex Legends, but BioWare is being closed. The company said it had a “small team” at BioWare working on the next Mass Effect, and it decided not to go forward with that.

In action adventure, EA said it is still working on Marvel’s Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game. BioWare also confirmed its fate in a tweet.

Here’s the full backstory to the layoffs in a message from EA executives Cam Weber and David Tinson at EA to employees:

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

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