EA says Mass Effect 5 doesn't need full studio support, moves some staff to other teams

The next Mass Effect game will be led by a smaller team at BioWare following restructuring.

Electronic Arts
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A major restructuring is happening at Dragon Age and Mass Effect developer BioWare as EA looks to condense the team working on Mass Effect 5. The studio claims that the next Mass Effect game doesn’t require the support of the full studio, and that it has been working to match employees with other roles at EA.

BioWare General Manager Gary McKay published a letter to BioWare’s blog, attempting to explain the staffing changes coming to the studio. In it, he confirms that the studio is turning its full focus to developing Mass Effect 5. “Given this stage of development, we don’t require support from the full studio,” he wrote. “We have incredible talent here at BioWare, and so we have worked diligently over the past few months to match many of our colleagues with other teams at EA that had open roles that were a strong fit.”

A top-down shot of an N7 spaceship, with the caption "Mass Effect will continue."

Source: Electronic Arts

While McKay says that EA is looking to find other roles in the company for members of the BioWare team being made obsolete, he fails to confirm whether or not there will be layoffs or an estimation of how many employees will be impacted. An IGN report sought clarification on the matter but instead received the following comment: "While we're not sharing numbers, the studio has the right number of people in the right roles to work on Mass Effect at this stage of development."

EA has also confirmed that development of the next Mass Effect game, which was announced over four years ago, will be led by series veterans Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, and Parrish Ley, among others.

The changes come after Dragon Age: The Veilguard fell short of EA’s sales expectations and the game’s director left BioWare.

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From The Chatty
    • reply
      January 29, 2025 1:17 PM

      That title sounds like EA isn't providing as much planned support to Bioware, then the Bioware part just sounds counter-intuitive and double-talky:
      the studio is turning its full focus to developing Mass Effect 5. “Given this stage of development, we don’t require support from the full studio,”
      Like now that they're really gonna get on it, they don't need as many people, which is the sort of thing you expect when they're nearly finished with development, not as they're just getting ramped up.

      THEN the last chunk makes it clear that EA is telling Bioware to lose people that will maybe find work in EA-at-large.

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