BioWare quietly lay off key Dragon Age team members while talking up the next Mass Effect
The layoff train has come for BioWare. A number of Dragon Age: The Veilguard staff are leaving the celebrated RPG company in the course of plans to become "a more agile, focused studio", as BioWare move ahead with the next Mass Effect game. Posting on Bluesky, senior systems designer Michelle Flamm, producer Jen Cheverie, editor Karin West-Weekes, lead writer Trick Weekes and narrative designer Ryan Cormier have all announced that they're looking for work.
All of which feels like it warrants a mention in general manager George McKay's recent blog about BioWare's future, but he comments only that they're "taking the opportunity to reimagine" how BioWare operate between projects, and "have 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." Which is a very slippery way to say that you're making a load of people redundant.
"Today, we are turning towards the future and preparing for the next chapter in BioWare's story," reads the full post from McKay, which was published yesterday. "As we announced in August 2023, we are changing how we build games to meet the needs of our upcoming projects and hold ourselves to the highest quality standards."
For context, the August 2023 announcement was this one, in which McKay revealed that BioWare would chop 50 roles in the course of "reorganizing our team to match the studio’s changing needs."
BioWare are now doing some more reorganising, after ending production of a massive RPG. According to McKay, a "core team" led by Mass Effect trilogy veterans, including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts and Parrish Ley, are currently working on Mass Effect 5, or whatever they end up calling it. Other people have been transferred to other EA projects, with the quiet part being that they face redundancy if suitable roles are not to be found.
"In keeping with our fierce commitment to innovating during the development and delivery of
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