Beyond the recently laid-off employees, a number of former Dragon Age: The Veilguard developers at BioWare are now said to be allocated "permanently" to other projects by EA, a shocking move for the employees involved.
The report comes from Jason Schreier (via Bloomberg), who says that BioWare initially claimed that the employees were meant for a temporary transfer, but later on, EA decided to make this permanent without informing the individuals involved.
But this week, the group was informed that the loans had morphed into permanent relocations, according to people familiar with what happened. They were no longer BioWare employees who were temporarily on assignment elsewhere; now, they worked for whichever EA subsidiary had borrowed them. If they want to work at BioWare again in the future, they would have to look for job openings and re-apply.
- Bloomberg
This is a pretty interesting development, considering that BioWare already suffered a round of layoffs last year. According to Bloomberg, BioWare now has less than 100 employees, which is certainly a lot less than you'd expect from a triple-A studio. In a statement from EA to IGN, the publisher provided a vague response:
The studio's priority was Dragon Age. During this time there were people continuing to build the vision for the next Mass Effect. Now that The Veilguard has shipped, the studio's full focus is Mass Effect. While we're not sharing numbers, the studio has the right number of people in the right roles to work on Mass Effect at this stage of development
- EA via IGN
BioWare fans are no doubt very disappointed by the news. It will be interesting to see how such decisions impact ongoing projects like the next Mass Effect title, which can potentially decide the studio's future in general. The once-beloved developer likely cannot afford another commercial disappointment.
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