[STEAM] Dragon Age Developers Reveal They’ve Been Laid Off After BioWare Puts ‘Full Focus’ on Mass Effect

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Yesterday, January 29,

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.

General manager Gary McKay said the studio is "taking this opportunity between full development cycles to reimagine how we work."

"Given this stage of development, we don’t require support from the full studio,” McKay continued. “We have incredible talent here at BioWare, and so we 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."

IGN understands that EA has already placed an unknown number of developers from BioWare into other, equivalent roles within the company. But a smaller number of Dragon Age team members are also seeing their roles terminated, and are being offered time to apply to other roles within the company if they so choose.

Following the announcement, a number of BioWare developers took to social media to say they were now leaving the studio. Editor

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, narrative designer and lead writer on Dragon Age: The Veilguard

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, and editor

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all said they were looking for work, with producer

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and senior systems designer

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also confirming their exit.

BioWare already suffered

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, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard

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announced her departure from the studio last week.

IGN asked EA for specifics on how many individuals at BioWare were being impacted by this latest change, how many face potential layoffs, and how many remain at the studio, but EA’s response was vague:

"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."

BioWare’s work on Dragon Age: The Veilguard was brought to an end last week with what sounded like its last major update.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard was the first new game in the fantasy RPG series in 10 years, but it came and went not with a bang but a whimper. Amid the launch

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, shocking fans who had hoped for expansions as previous Dragon Age games had received.

Last week, EA admitted

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; it had expected three million players, but the game managed only 1.5 million. We've

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, including

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and the

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of

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at different stages.

As for Mass Effect, EA said a "core team" at BioWare is developing the next Mass Effect game under the leadership of veterans from the original trilogy, including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, Parrish Ley, and others.

Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on

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at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld.

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