Hi gamedev, I want you to help me get a nuanced take

[I posted some observations and commentary on Bioware's situation in late January of 2025], the last time they had a big round of layoffs. I believe those observations and comments remain applicable today. Businesses are not charities and it is naive to expect any company to spend millions each year from now until the heat death of the universe to pay for studios that don't put out good results no matter how good a history that studio has. To my knowledge, only one studio has ever survived a third sequential flop (Ion Storm in the early 2000s) and they still closed their doors within a year of the third flop anyway. It's been almost two years since the last round of Bioware layoffs, so there have been some additional things I suspect have happened.

What I theorize happened with Bioware over the past year and a half or so is that those remaining were heads-down working hard on the core gameplay and pitch for the new Mass Effect. They've had enough time for a few rounds of show and tell with the executives - these usually occur once every 3-6 months, depending on who they're showing to. They probably had difficulty securing a strong green light from the executives or the progress was slower than the executives liked. If they didn't get the green light, there were really only two options - send it back to preproduction again or cancel it outright. The overall financial situation likely made the choice fairly easy.

Combine this with continued industry-wide difficult financial situation and it becomes clear that EA's new owners decided that EA as an org was too expensive to run as it has been. This is the message that has been coming from all of the major western publishers - refocus on the core franchises that earn, cut everything that isn't launching within two years, and evaluate whether whatever is remaining is worth funding. Remember, Bioware was down to maybe 50ish people total and the announced layoffs today were 400. That's 350 people left unaccounted for. Those layoffs are coming from other EA studios like Skate developer Full Circle, Sims Franchise developer Maxis, and Battlefield studios DICE, Ripple Effect, Criterion, and Motive.

I'll point out that the Sports, Project Evergreen (the next Sims core title), Star Wars Jedi, Star Wars Battlefront, and Iron Man dev teams were all explicitly spared the knife this time around. It seems likely that these are the teams that will be shipping within calendar 2027 and 2028, with the best chances (according to the executives) at being hits. Business gonna business. The next few years will likely focus on core properties, faster turnaround, and profitability. This was not their first layoff and I don't think it will be the last.

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