With Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and the new Mass Effect in the works, letting so many people go doesn’t sound good.

BioWare director Gary McKay wrote a blog post, in which he expressed in his usual PR-speak that it’s a shame, but fifty people are being made redundant: “To meet the needs of our upcoming projects, continue to hold ourselves to the highest standard of quality, and ensure BioWare can continue to thrive in an industry that’s rapidly evolving, we must shift towards a more agile and more focused studio. It will allow our developers to iterate quickly, unlock more creativity, and form a clear vision of what we’re building before development ramps up. We find ourselves in a position where change is necessary and unavoidable to achieve this. As difficult as this is, rethinking our approach to development inevitably means reorganizing our team to match the studio’s changing needs. As part of this transition, we eliminated approximately 50 roles at BioWare. That is deeply painful and humbling to write. We do everything possible to handle the process with empathy, respect, and clear communication. With that last point in mind, I want to take a moment to explain how we got here, what we’re doing to support our colleagues, and what this means for BioWare’s current and future games.

After much consideration and careful planning, we have built a long-term vision that will preserve the health of the studio and better enable us to do what we do best: create exceptional story-driven single-player experiences filled with vast worlds and rich characters. This vision balances the current needs of the studio—namely, ensuring Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is an outstanding game—with its future, including the success of the next Mass Effect. We’ve chosen to act now in part to provide our impacted colleagues with as many internal opportunities as possible. These changes coincide with a significant number of roles that are currently open across EA’s other studios. Affected employees will be provided professional resources and assistance as they apply for these positions. While it’s unlikely that everyone will find a new role within the company, we are committed to supporting our staff as they navigate this change. We sincerely hope they can continue their exemplary work at studios that benefit immensely from their talents.

[…] A core veteran team led by Mike Gamble continues their pre-production work on the next Mass Effect. Our commitment to quality continues to be our North Star. As cliche as this sounds, there truly is never a good time to enact changes like this, but we trust that we have the right leaders and team in place with vision, passion, and proven track records to deliver world-class Dragon Age and Mass Effect experiences that our fans will love. For now, I want to thank everyone at BioWare—past and present—for making the studio what it is. I also want to thank our community for your continued support. We’re eager to reveal more about Dreadwolf and look forward to discovering what else the future holds.”

It’s an unusual explanation. We have never heard of a studio developing a quality game with a smaller team, and Electronic Arts is making a ton of money from the gambling addicts caused by Ultimate Team. And the studio is developing two games. Something about the timing doesn’t feel right. It wasn’t another step towards the demise of BioWare en bloc, was it…? Even if it was related to a playtesting group, Keywords.

Source: WCCFTech