It’s wild. No studio can probably withstand three flops in a row (Anthem, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dragon Age: Veilguard).
GOTY → Flop → Flop → Flop → ???
10 years ago, Dragon Age: Inquisition won several GOTY awards, including The Game Awards (TGA), and sold 12M copies. After that, it’s been one disaster after another.
The current number of employees has dropped to under 100, so the studio is now almost 4x smaller in headcount than domestic Remedy, which feels wild when viewed through nostalgic glasses.
Although it’s a huge shame that one of the best studios of yesteryear is no longer relevant, I am somewhat pleased with the trend of recent years where overly safe AAA games and live service games fail, which hopefully will, over time, bring back a willingness to take risks and creativity to the industry.
I am utterly fed up with almost every AAA studio riding the same trends and using the same gameplay loops.
The studio has shrunk to less than 100 people following the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-01-31/electronic-arts-slashes-bioware-after-dragon-age-sales-miss?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTczODM1MTgzMSwiZXhwIjoxNzM4OTU2NjMxLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTUVlXVThUMEFGQjQwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJCMUVBQkI5NjQ2QUNBREZFQTJBRkI4MjI1MzgyQTJFQSJ9.91ztnslkcG02JwTwRRfVCXIJp8FOdqGBjCNQgz-bE8k&leadSource=uverify%20wall
