After recent reports that BioWare would be having its development team re-assigned, and some even laid off, Baldur’s Gate 3‘s publishing director at Larian Studios has called EA out through a post on social media platform X. Larian’s Michael Douse spoke out about the layoffs, saying that the way the lay-offs were carried out was bad. Douse also calls out the decision as a short-term cost-saving measure at the expensive of not solving a long-term problem.
“To make it absolutely clear, what I hate about the way layoffs are carried out is that they are done *before* decision makers know what do do with a studio, and not as a result of figuring out a direction,” posted Douse on X. “This is consistently true. It is a short term cost-saving measure at a huge human expense that doesn’t solve a long term problem. (A lack of a viable strategic direction defined at an executive level). You can probably figure it out if you trust your developers instead of firing them. On a positive note, I’m seeing a slight shift in this direction. In the low-stakes arena of remasters and remakes, but they are the foundation of something bigger.”
Douse also called out EA for being a publisher worth $30 billion, but still being unable to support BioWare with an economic foundation. Douse posted about how lay offs like this affect “institutional knowledge” that is often lost when developers that have lost their jobs leave the industry.
“It is possible not to layoff large parts of your development teams between or after projects,” he posted. “Critically, retaining that institutional knowledge is key for the next. It’s often used as an excuse to ‘trim fat’ and to an extent I understand that under financial pressure, but doesn’t that just highlight how needless the aggressive efficiency of giant corporations is? I’d understand it if they were pumping out hit after hit – perhaps you could argue it’s working – but clearly the aggressive streamlining (layoffs) aren’t. It’s *nothing but cost cutting* in the most brutal sense. It’s *always* people lower down the food chain that suffer, when it’s *clearly* strategy higher up the food chain that’s causing the problem. On a pirate ship, they’d toss the captain overboard. Video games companies should be run like pirate ships.”
Earlier this week, BioWare general manager Gary McKay revealed that the studio was going through a bit of a restructuring in order for its developers to better work on the next project: Mass Effect 5. According to McKay, a core team at BioWare is working on the next Mass Effect, including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, and Parrish Ley, among others.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard seemed to not perform as well as EA would have liked, and as a result, BioWare has been seeing some trouble since the game launched. Earlier this month, the game’s director, Corrine Busche, had left the company to work on a new CRPG.
For more details about Dragon Age: The Veilguard, check out our review.
To make it absolutely clear, what I hate about the way layoffs are carried out is that they are done *before* decision makers know what do do with a studio, and not as a result of figuring out a direction. This is consistently true. It is a short term cost saving measure at a…
— Very AFK (@Cromwelp) January 31, 2025
It is possible not to layoff large parts of your development teams between or after projects. Critically, retaining that institutional knowledge is key for the next. It’s often used as an excuse to ‘trim fat’ and to an extent I understand that under financial pressure, but…
— Very AFK (@Cromwelp) January 30, 2025