Final week, legendary RPG studio BioWare introduced that it was shutting up store as a part of EA’s newest spherical of layoffs. It was one in all many studios hit by cuts from the corporate on the identical day, which supposedly worn out round 400 jobs.
One week on, and a number of other present and former EA workers have anonymously spoken to Vertical Slice about their time on the writer. Unsurprisingly, they paint a slightly bleak image of what it is like behind closed doorways in 2026.
The large unifier between most of the accounts is how divorced the studio execs appear from their workers. “Morale has been horrible,” one supply advised Vertical Slice on the pressured introduction of AI software program and altering work practices. “The road we stored listening to is ‘do much less, higher’ but it surely simply felt like we have been doing the identical quantity with much less folks. Higher administration was very enthusiastic about Claude and the chances of [generative] AI, a lot to the chagrin of my crew.”
It is hardly the primary time we have heard EA bang the ‘AI is the long run’ drum, but it surely’s nonetheless miserable to listen to how it’s being applied into years of generational expertise. “They will not inform you these instruments are a mandate,” one employee continued, “however they will make it unattainable or very troublesome so that you can do your job with out [them].”
And even these jobs are altering. EA is among the many AAA studios chasing an unattainable live-service mannequin, with all initiatives that are not ‘Fortnite-however‘ being pushed to the sidelines, earlier than the builders of these enforced initiatives are punished for his or her failure. “EA executives can’t fail, solely be failed,” one other staffer advised the outlet, “They have been lucky that [EA Sports FC] sells and makes a lot cash that it might finance their unhealthy bets.”
And so we arrive on the layoffs. In line with those that spoke to the outlet, EA’s layoff process is unusually gatekeepy and “secretive”, with groups (and sometimes managers) not being knowledgeable of who, particularly, is being lower. Other than messing up challenge workflows, this additionally implies that the human connection is faraway from each departure, with associates and colleagues not figuring out who’s nonetheless there till they see it crop up on social media or LinkedIn. “A part of the devastating emotional affect is mainly discovering out your good friend and co-worker has been let go time and again and once more over the course of weeks,” mentioned one employee.
A number of former-EA workers mentioned that they have been invited to a chat-less Zoom assembly to tell them of their contract termination, with all different contributors hidden: “You are getting laid off since you’re simply numbers on a listing. There’s by no means an understanding of the particular challenge [you’re working on].”
Considerably hilariously, evidently the studio has supplied a few of these affected by the layoffs a ‘grace interval’, the place they will discover a completely different function within the firm. Other than enforced in-office working hours, many are refusing the supply for the straightforward cause that they do not wish to maintain working for an organization that has handled them so badly. “It is a joke,” one ex-employee mentioned, “I did not even hassle wanting [at the internal roles] as a result of I do not wish to work at this place anymore.”
The most recent spherical of layoffs come after EA was picked up by Saudi Arabia’s PIF, lumping the studio with round $18 billion of debt. In an inner letter to its remaining workers, the writer introduced that it’ll prioritise its sports activities collection, Apex Legends, Star Wars Jedi and Battlefield initiatives shifting ahead.