BioWare veterans confirm they were laid off by EA, including senior Dragon Age and Mass Effect devs
Electronic Arts announced a downsizing of BioWare yesterday that saw «many» employees being moved to other studios within the company while «a core team» continues work on the next Mass Effect. EA declined to comment on whether the restructuring would also result in layoffs, but to absolutely no one's surprise, it has, including some serious veteran talent.
Shortly after the restructuring announcement went live, both Karin and Trick Weekes revealed on Bluesky that they were no longer with the studio. Both are well-known BioWare veterans: Trick Weekes served as a writer on all the games and expansions in the original Mass Effect trilogy, as well as Dragon Age: Origins and Inquisition, before becoming lead writer on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, while Karin Weekes served as an editor on Mass Effect 2, 3, and Andromeda, Dragon Age: Origins, DA2, and Inquisition, Anthem, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Also confirming that they've been go are:
The layoffs come less than two weeks after Dragon Age: The Veilguard game director Corinne Busche announced her own departure from BioWare, and just a week after EA said Veilguard had underperformed sales expectations: Despite hitting a peak concurrent player count of more than 89,000 on Steam alone at launch (a figure good enough to put it in Steam's daily top 10 for that metric), and «engaging» roughly 1.5 million players during the quarter (I use that term because it's not explicitly synonymous with sales), EA said Veilguard was «down nearly 50% from the company’s expectations.»
Collectively, the cuts represent a major loss of creative talent for the studio, and bears echoes of BioWare's layoff of roughly 50 employees in 2023, which included Mary Kirby, a writer on all the Dragon Age games and creator of some of the series' best-loved characters. As PC Gamer's Fraser Brown said when that round of layoffs took place, «If you've enjoyed the writing in any Dragon Age games, you've probably got Kirby to thank.»
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