Bioware’s spin machine manages to make layoffs sound positive and for the benefit of all when actually…

The games industry is not shy of layoffs since Covid. The mass extinction of jobs at games studios has become a pandemic of its own and news of more swingeing cuts is usually accompanied by some mealy-mouthed press release from high ups, full of words such as restructure, agile and dynamic, but never really mentioning that the people whose only crime was to come into work and grind themselves into the dust to make you money, now have to dynamically find themselves a new job.

There have been so many of these corporate vomits that these days I just roll my eyes at the insensitivity of it all, but then, Bioware, heroes of classics such as Mass Effect and more recently the still successful but not as successful as the overlords demand, Dragon Age: The Veilguard have seen these statements and gone for a ‘hold my beer’ moment.

Here’s a couple of the best paragraphs from the blog post:

“In keeping with our fierce commitment to innovating during the development and delivery of Mass Effect, we have challenged ourselves to think deeply about delivering the best experience to our fans. We are taking this opportunity between full development cycles to reimagine how we work at BioWare.”

Sounds great. They are challenging themselves and are fiercely committed. Nice. Oh hold on…

“Given this stage of development, we don’t require support from the full studio. 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.”

Ohhhh, it’s just another sackings release isn’t it?

Don’t require support of the full studio? Maybe, now the game is out, the full studio needs support from you? Imagine. Given that the post doesn’t mention layoffs as such we are left to infer it from phrases such as “match many of our colleagues with other teams” and “don’t require”. Also, IGN are reporting layoffs now and has obtained a quote from parent company Electronic Arts which says, “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.”

Finally, the blog concludes with more ‘good news’:

“Today’s news will see BioWare become a more agile, focused studio that produces unforgettable RPGs. We appreciate your support as we build a new future for BioWare.”

Agile. Ah, there you are old friend.

In our review of the first episode of the new season on Mythic Quest one of the best jokes was, “When the pandemic ended the videogame industry took a hit. Mythic Quest lost a lot of good people – when we fired them.”

Maybe one day soon one of these companies will come out and own what they are actually doing. Probably shouldn’t hold my breath eh?

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