Dragon Age: The Veilguard developers and writers have been laid off, while BioWare continues working on the next entry in the Mass Effect series under the leadership of veterans from the original trilogy.
In a blog post shared yesterday, BioWare provided an update on the studio, saying that, now that Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been released, a core team is working under the leadership of veterans including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, Parrish Ley, on the next Mass Effect game. At the current stage of development, BioWare doesn't need the support from the full studio, and has "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."
Unfortunately, this restructuring, in reality, meant layoffs. According to posts on LinkedIn and Bluesky, as reported on the Gaming Leaks subreddit, writers and developers who worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard at BioWare no longer work at the studio. These include Lead Writer Trick Weekes, Lead Editor Karin West-Weekes, Narrative Editor Ryan Cormier, Producer Jennifer Cheverie Cott, Associate Game Producer Daniel Steed, Senior Product Manager Lina Anderson, and Senior Systems Designer Michelle Flamm. Insider Gaming's Mike Straw also confirmed that a few dozen developers were also laid off. Since Dragon Age: The Veilguard only reached 1.5 million players, missing expectations by nearly 50%, it's not too surprising that BioWare is being impacted by the game's underperformance. However, it's still disingenuous to hide these layoffs behind restructuring claims.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is now available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S worldwide. You can learn more about the game in our review.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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