BioWare Lays Off Another Batch Of Employees

2 rounds of layoffs?  Yeah, I’d say a bit of worry is warranted.  I’m more curious about the number of individuals affected.  If it’s a small number then it’s probably not an issue but if it’s high then I think it’s a larger cause for concern.  I know people had huge expectations for this game but it was due to Bioware’s rhetoric (which was supported by their older titles, not entirely by the new ones however).  Besides, after years of development and SOOO much money, the product (even when compared to other products of it’s generation) was inferior when it came to content.  Sure, the quality was amazing but the content was lack luster.  Most of the stories were boring and random, the game had no feeling of “epicness” and overall you felt alone and had no incentive to team up with others in general.  Leveling was fast which isn’t an issue if there was a lot of content to the game but once you reached level 50, raids were all that there was to do.  PvP was there from the start and was more fun in the lower levels than at level 50, which is sad and just proves that the WoW system just isn’t as effective as everyone has thought.  People want a change and Bioware promised SWTOR was it, yet they made a clone of WoW (in terms of structure) and it still was a failure when compared to WoW’s launch in terms of the amount of content and the speed at which players finished it.  There was a feeling of “did they even play this” once I reached level 50.

Back to back layoffs are really bad.  Suspect BW is going to do a major write off for SWTOR and wanted to include as much staff reductions as possible.  Probably wanted to clear the books on SWTOR and start next year with clean revenue numbers. They will start hiring again, after they write off the major expenses for SWTOR.

that makes me really sad that all these people are being laid off, unlike most people i played with i really did enjoy playing swtor. hopefully another company will step up and give these people a job.

It’s always sad when people lose their jobs, specially now with the economy as it is. I sincerely wish the best for this people and I hope they’ll have better luck in their future endeavors.

Also a little detail this article failed to mention is that Rich Vogel was not only the executive producer of SWTOR but also one of the co-founders of Bioware.

Some of this is certainly just flat out cost coverage but I also legitimately wonder how much of the idea is to narrow down BioWare Austin to a tight dedicated team now that TOR’s basically reach parity with market peers. I think it’s mostly right to say that it’s the former but I still wonder anyway.

Regardless, layoffs like this affect studio morale a lot. I don’t think this will have the major, catastrophic effects that some will claim but it certainly will have negative effect. The question becomes if renewed focus and new hires can add creative vigor to the studio. 

how the hell does james ohlen and gabe ametewhatever have jobs still? Seriously those 2 continue to destroy swtor more then all of the competion combined lol.  I feel sorry for people having to put they worked at ea on thier resume

I’m quite upset since my friend lost his job. I’m hoping that this game will keep losing subs now.

Any reason no one is reporting on the fact that the games lead designer Georg Zoeller left in July? 

lol fail game is failing.

Come home to Canada BioWare and make us many more Dragon Age and Mass Effects and possibly something new!