Following the shocking closure of legendary RPG studio BioWare, Electronic Arts has posted a lengthy missive laying out its plans for "EA's next chapter," which sounds very much like cuts almost across the board.
I'll spare you the corporate gobbledygook about challenging assumptions, confronting assumptions, and imagining new possibilities, and cut straight to the chase: The plan is to do fewer things with fewer people focusing on its biggest franchises. What that works out to practically:
- Shooters: More Battlefield, more Apex Legends, and "bringing together our Respawn and DICE studios to collaborate on a future project."
- Action-adventure: Marvel's Iron Man and the third Star Wars Jedi game are still happening, but "beyond that, we will concentrate our efforts on fewer simultaneous, large-scale projects."
- EA Sports: Full commitment to EA Sports FC, plus a new American football game creatively codenamed "Project Gridiron," and Fight Night is coming back.
- Lifestyle: The Sims will continue but "Project Lotus," originally presumed to be a sort of precursor to The Sims 5, has been paused. The Skate dev team, meanwhile, is being cut to "build a healthier and more sustainable business."
Of course, there's also a gross little nod to BioWare and the end of Mass Effect: "As we focus on these larger opportunities, we've had a small team at BioWare working on early-development for Mass Effect. We've made the decision not to move forward with this development, which means we’re closing the studio and our Edmonton workspace. BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we do not take this decision lightly."
The message doesn't specifically reference the layoff of around 400 employees at Electronic Arts reported by Bloomberg, but it does say some of the changes announced today "are difficult, especially for the people and teams across the company who are directly affected," which is the sort of mealy-mouthed guffola put out by C-suites when they don't want to say with clarity that they just hacked out a significant chunk of their workforce.
One other thing I find interesting about this announcement: It's attributed to Cam and David, who I assume are Cam Weber and David Tinson, recently installed near the top of EA as president and chief studios officer, and president and chief operating officer. The name of Andrew Wilson, Electronic Arts CEO, is rather notably absent. Make of that what you will—but for the record, EA confirmed that Wilson is still the chief executive.
The post is short on detail, but the broad gist of the whole thing—cuts and concentration—aren't entirely surprising given the company's recent acquisition by Saudi Arabia, which saddled it with $20 billion in debt and owners not known for their liberal mindset. Plans for massive cuts were reported in early August, and a possible merger with Saudi-owned Savvy Games Group has also been rumored. But former BioWare lead writer Patrick Weekes made the call more than a year ago, when the EA acquisition first happened, predicting that "guns and football" games would be fine, but "gay stuff" would be out.
