EA Layoffs Leave Staff Describing Secrecy and Sinking Morale

Electronic Arts has laid off about 400 workers across multiple studios, cancelling projects as it narrows its focus to the games that earn the most money. The biggest name affected is BioWare. EA has closed the studio behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age and is cutting most of the roughly 50 people who were still working there.

The cuts follow a familiar pattern for a publisher under pressure to protect margins. Rather than support a wide slate of experiments, EA is concentrating resources on its established franchises and proven earners, which leaves smaller or less certain teams exposed when budgets tighten.

The fallout inside the company is the harder part to measure. Current and former employees have described a culture of secrecy, with little information reaching staff, and a mood that one account characterized as a cold, dead place slowly decaying. Morale is reported to be very low across the teams still in place.

The closure of BioWare is likely to draw the most attention from players. The studio helped define modern role-playing games, and its departure marks a significant shift for the franchises it leaves behind. EA has not, in the material available here, detailed what happens to those series next.