r/Games • u/sjdubya • 9h ago

Industry News Schreier: Electronic Arts to Cut 400 Jobs, Shut Down BioWare

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-21/electronic-arts-to-cut-400-jobs-shut-down-bioware?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc5MjYwMjI4MCwiZXhwIjoxNzkzMjA3MDgwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUTjlPUkZLSVVQU08wMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJCMUVBQkI5NjQ2QUM0REZFQTJBRkI4MjI1MzgyQTJFQSJ9.BPLdBqixyN47DHZvtrfHyRsF_Np3UKIKzGi_WqMA-I4
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u/TakenBacon90 7h ago

Sorry let me clarify for those who don't have more knowledge on the situation.

Casey Hudson came up with Anthem and pitched it. Then he left the studio cause he couldn't get resources because Inquisition was being finished up.

When he came back as head of studio he screwed over the DA4 team and convinced EA to let them turn it into a live service game so that Casey could take all of those resources and put them on Anthem while DA4 Live service game went back to a tiny team to brainstorm.

so it's four things overall about Anthem that doomed Bioware.

  1. Anthem ended up sucking

2 Anthem took up time where the main Mass Effect team could be working on another sequel

  1. Anthem made Bioware push the next Mass Effect game to the Andromeda team who flopped when given the chance to run with it.

  2. Anthem screwed over the DA team by pushing it to Live Service so they could have DA dev resources. This caused a huge pivot in the DA development that changed a lot about the tone, art style, content, game systems that led to us eventually getting Veilguard.

hope that clears up my opinion on things. Also, yes EA encouraged Live Service but I am confident that EA would have also said yes to more Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

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u/ThePot94 7h ago

That's correct, and what you listed is factual. Casey Hudson fucked up big time at BioWare, and Anthem was just the output of the waste his produced. The game's general idea was cool, and introguing, but the wrong people - and in this case, I think, the wrong studio - made it so it came out a disaster.