EA's Layoffs Reach Skate Studio as BioWare Closure Widens

Electronic Arts' round of layoffs is reaching further than its announced closure of BioWare, the Mass Effect developer. Staff at the studio behind the latest Skate game have now said they were also let go, and the scale of the cuts is becoming clearer.

The BioWare closure was the headline news, given the studio's long run with Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The Skate team's reports show the reductions were not limited to one historic franchise house. Skate, the skateboarding series EA has been rebuilding in recent years, is now a live project with a team that has been cut back.

EA has not yet laid out a full breakdown of which teams were affected or how many people lost their jobs across the company. Until it does, the picture will come mainly from individual staff accounts and reports from the studios themselves. Anyone following the company's finances and game pipeline should expect more details to emerge as affected employees speak out.

For players, the immediate question is what happens to games in development and to the live services still running. For the industry, the cuts add to a long list of layoffs at major publishers and point to a continued push to reduce costs across large studios.