Last updated: October 22, 2026
By Robert Ardell, Co-Founder and Strategic Advisor, KORE1
EA is closing BioWare and cutting about 400 jobs, roughly 3 percent of the company, according to Bloomberg, with around 50 of those roles at BioWare itself. The next Mass Effect, still in early development, goes with it. For a hiring manager the number that matters is the 50, not the 400, because a studio this specialized releases one very particular kind of talent, all in the same week.
Last year a medical-training simulation company in Carlsbad sent us a req for a “game writer.” Three words. After an hour on the phone the real job came out. They needed someone who could write branching conversations where every dialogue choice carried a clinical consequence the trainee would feel three scenes later. We found a quest designer from a role-playing studio, laid off that spring, who had spent six years doing exactly that for a fantasy audience. She signed in 19 days. The company had been searching for four months and kept getting copywriters.
I’m Robert Ardell. I co-founded KORE1 in 2005, and our game developer staffing desk, run by our gaming recruiters, is the part of the firm that sees these resumes first. We’re paid a placement fee by the company that hires, so weigh what follows accordingly. Near the end I’ll say which of these people most companies should leave alone.
This piece sits under our running 2026 tech layoffs tracker and next to our Epic Games layoffs breakdown from March. Epic was engine and netcode talent, the C++ crowd we also recruit through our IT staffing services. BioWare sits at the opposite end of a game studio. Writers, designers, cinematic artists, and the production people who hold a story-driven game together. Different buyers, different timing, and a much smaller pool.
Video chapters
- 0:00 — What Is Confirmed and What Is Still a Report
- 0:24 — Why EA Would Close BioWare Now
- 0:51 — Six Benches a Story-Driven Studio Puts on the Market
- 1:49 — Where the Game Talent Goes
- 2:16 — The Edmonton Question
- 2:42 — What These Candidates Cost in 2026
- 3:31 — If You Have a Req Open Right Now
Read full transcript
EA is closing BioWare, and the next Mass Effect, still in early development, goes with it. For a hiring manager, the number that matters isn’t the company-wide cut. It’s the BioWare share. We’re KORE1, a staffing firm, and we get paid by the company that hires, so weigh what follows accordingly. EA and BioWare confirmed the closure. The size of the cut is different. About 400 jobs, roughly 3%, with around 50 at BioWare. That’s Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the plans.
Why now? EA’s own explanation is one sentence long, and it says nothing about BioWare. Look at what EA is keeping instead. Sports. Apex Legends. Battlefield. Star Wars and Iron Man games. Shooters, sports, and licensed franchises, and a story-first role-playing studio with a long development cycle was the odd one out. That’s our read, not EA’s. BioWare had also been cut back in 2025 after Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed sales expectations, so some of this talent has been out there for months.
Fifty people sounds like one pool. It isn’t. Inside a team like this, the jobs barely overlap, and each one lands in a different buyer market. Narrative designers and writers. Systems and combat designers. Engine and gameplay engineers. Tools engineers. Cinematic artists. And producers. Nobody has said which roles were cut, so treat this as what a studio like this produces, not a roster. Narrative design is the scarcest bench. Last year a medical-training simulation company sent us a req for a game writer. The real job was branching conversations where every dialogue choice carried a clinical consequence, and we found a quest designer from a role-playing studio who’d done exactly that for six years. She signed in 19 days. The company had searched for four months and kept getting copywriters. Engine engineers are a different story. BioWare shipped on EA’s proprietary Frostbite engine, so there’s no public documentation and no portfolio project to check a candidate against. You’re hiring someone who knows a large C++ engine from the inside, and that skill moves to Unreal with a ramp of about a quarter.
So where does it all go? EA says it will try to place affected employees inside EA first, so some of the 50 will never reach the open market. The obvious move to another studio is narrower this fall than it’s been in years. That pushes talent toward simulation, enterprise software, and consumer tech. Senior engine engineers go in days. Tools engineers are close behind, with the widest receiving market. Artists wait on reel clearance, since work from a cancelled project is often under NDA. Narrative and production are slow.
The closure covers BioWare’s Edmonton workspace, so expect a meaningful share of this group to be in Alberta. Nothing published says how long anyone stays on payroll, so a candidate who looks available on LinkedIn could be paid and fielding four other recruiter calls. Hiring them remotely generally works, though it brings Canadian payroll and tax obligations. Relocating to the U.S. needs work authorization, like TN status for listed professions, and whether a design or art role fits that list is an immigration attorney’s question.
Federal data doesn’t track game developers as their own occupation, so the closest match is software developers, at a $135,980 median in May 2025 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Game engineers sit above that. In 2026, our desk is seeing mid-level engine engineers at $115k to $145k base, seniors at $140k to $190k, and staff or lead at $200k and up. Senior contract runs $90 to $145 an hour. Designers and artists are murkier. Four aggregators gave us four answers for a video game designer this month, from about $73k to about $110k. Price by shipped titles and scope, not by the title on the resume.
Timing first. EA’s global town hall is in November, and the company says it will try to place people internally, so the first real read on who’s available comes after that. Engine and tools engineers will go sooner, so contact them now. Rewrite the title before you post. A narrative designer who sees Content Writer assumes you don’t know what they do, while Narrative Designer, Branching Dialogue Systems tells them you read the resume. You might be wondering whether a mid-size studio can hire a narrative designer from a place like BioWare. Yes, if the job has real story in it, because they pick the work over the logo. And skip these people entirely if you run a hyper-casual mobile shop that ships in 8 weeks, since someone who spent 6 years inside a story will be bored by February. For scale, KORE1 recruits across 30-plus U.S. metros. An IT search averages 17 days from kickoff to accepted offer, and 92% of our placements are still on the job at month 12. Unsure? Start contract-to-hire and put a senior designer or engineer on real work before converting. Visit KORE1.com, and send us the req.
What Is Confirmed and What Is Still a Report
Short version. EA confirmed the closure. The size of the cut comes from Bloomberg, not from EA.
| Claim | Source | Status as of October 22, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| BioWare is closing, along with its Edmonton workspace | EA staff letter and BioWare’s own statement, October 21 | Confirmed by EA and BioWare |
| The next Mass Effect is cancelled | BioWare: “early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending” | Confirmed |
| About 400 jobs cut, roughly 3 percent of EA | Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the plans | Reported, not an EA figure |
| Around 50 of those jobs are at BioWare | Bloomberg | Reported |
| A planned Sims game, Project Lotus, is dropped in favor of Project Evergreen | Bloomberg and coverage of EA’s letter | Reported, and outlets differ on cancelled versus on hold |
| Affected employees get help finding other roles inside EA, with a global town hall planned for November | EA staff letter, as summarized by Gematsu | Stated by EA |
| Where the other 350 or so cuts fall | No outlet we read names the teams | Unknown |
| Whether BioWare’s Austin team is affected | Not mentioned in the coverage we read | Unknown |
The scoop came from Bloomberg, which sits behind a paywall, and Game Developer, Game Informer, and Gematsu carry the details from the letter to staff, signed by chief operating officer David Tinson and chief studios officer Cam Weber.
Fifty people is a small number for a studio with 30 years of history, and BioWare had already been reduced in 2025 after Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed EA’s sales expectations, per Dexerto. So assume part of the BioWare diaspora has been out there for months, employed elsewhere or searching, and that this week adds to the supply instead of creating it.
Why EA Would Close BioWare Now
EA’s own explanation is one sentence long. “Over the past several months, we’ve taken a hard look at our business.” Nothing about BioWare specifically.
The list of what EA is keeping says more. Sports. Apex Legends. Battlefield. The next Star Wars Jedi game and a new Iron Man game. Respawn and DICE working together on a new project that Bloomberg reports is likely a Star Wars Battlefront title, plus a returning Fight Night and a new football game called Project Gridiron, per Gematsu. Shooters, sports, and licensed franchises. A story-first role-playing studio with a long development cycle was the odd one out on that list. That’s my read, not EA’s.
The last decade didn’t help. Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem both underwhelmed, and Game Developer notes that Anthem sold around 5 million copies before EA shut it down, while Game Informer says the two releases hurt the studio’s reputation with some fans. The Veilguard started as a live-service game, got reworked into a single-player one, and shipped in 2024 after what Game Informer calls a troubled, decade-long development. Critics liked it more than BioWare’s previous two games. EA, per Dexerto, wanted more sales.
Zoom out and the labor market these 50 people are walking into looks rough. The GDC 2026 State of the Game Industry survey found that a third of U.S. respondents had been laid off in the past two years, 28 percent worldwide, and roughly two-thirds of people at AAA studios said their company had cut staff within the year. It’s a self-selected survey of about 2,300 people, so treat the percentages as a mood and not a census. The mood is bad.
Six Benches a Story-Driven Studio Puts on the Market
Fifty people sounds like one searchable pool. It isn’t. Inside a team like BioWare’s, the jobs barely overlap, and each one lands in a different buyer market. One caveat before the list. Nobody has said which roles were cut, and the other 350 or so EA jobs are scattered across the company. What follows is what a studio like this one produces, not a roster of who is on the market today.
Narrative Designers and Game Writers
The scarcest bench, and the one outsiders misjudge most. BioWare’s reputation rested on conversation. Companions you argued with, dialogue choices that came back three missions later. The people who built that don’t just write well. They build systems where a choice sets a flag, the flag changes a scene, and the scene still has to read like a human wrote it, across hundreds of thousands of words of branching text. Most hiring managers outside games have never seen that skill on a resume, and they read it as “copywriter.” That’s the Carlsbad story again. Buyers outside games include training and simulation companies, education technology, and conversational AI product teams that need someone who can design a dialogue that doesn’t dead-end.
Systems and Combat Designers
Spreadsheets with opinions. Progression curves, ability balance, loot economies, the math that decides whether level 14 feels good. Mobile role-playing and strategy studios chase these designers hard, as do consumer apps that want someone who understands what keeps a person coming back on day 30 to a product they installed a month ago. Usually quiet people. Often underpriced on their first offer because they don’t negotiate like engineers do.
Engine and Gameplay Engineers
BioWare shipped Dragon Age: Inquisition, Anthem, and The Veilguard on EA’s in-house Frostbite engine. That matters for a hiring manager because Frostbite is proprietary, which means there is no public documentation, no portfolio project, and no Stack Overflow answer to check a candidate against. What you’re hiring is a person who understands how a large C++ engine works from the inside, and that skill moves to Unreal with a ramp. Assume about a quarter before they’re fully productive, the same ramp we see for senior engineers switching between Unity and Unreal Engine. This is the bench that moves fastest. Senior engineers rarely wait long.
Tools and Pipeline Engineers
Dialogue editors, localization pipelines, build systems, the internal software that lets 200 contributors work on one game without stepping on each other. Unglamorous. Extremely portable. A tools engineer who kept a localization pipeline running for eight languages is useful to a fintech, a simulation shop, or a visual effects company by the end of week two, and nobody at those companies will believe how much they know until they see it.
Cinematic, Animation, and Character Artists
Conversation scenes are the signature of this studio, so the cinematic side of its art team is unusually deep. Facial animation, camera work for dialogue, character modeling that has to hold up in a close-up for forty hours. Unreal-based virtual production stages, streaming and film studios, automotive visualization groups, and AR and VR teams all buy this profile, and most of them want a portfolio reel before they want a resume. Reels from a cancelled project are often locked down by NDA. Expect delays.
Producers and Production Leads
Production is where the pool gets quiet and the search gets strange. A game producer has run a content pipeline across outsourcers, vendors, and several time zones against a milestone that moved twice, and in tech that resume reads as technical program manager if you let it, which plenty of software companies will. Still, producers who came up through an RPG tend to be better at something else, which is telling a director that a feature will not fit in the build. Hard to price. Hard to find.
Where the Game Talent Goes
The table maps each bench to the kinds of employers that have absorbed comparable talent off our desk over the past year. It’s a working map from placement patterns, not a forecast of where any named BioWare employee will end up, and the companies listed employ these profiles but aren’t necessarily hiring this week.
| Bench | Inside Games | Outside Games | How the Pool Moves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Narrative design and writing | Obsidian, Larian, CD Projekt Red, Netflix Games | Medical and defense simulation firms, education technology, conversational AI teams | Thin buyer pool in games, wide and slow outside |
| Systems and combat design | Mobile RPG and strategy studios, Riot, Blizzard | Consumer apps with progression and rewards loops, fintech engagement teams | Steady, rarely urgent |
| Engine and gameplay engineering | Bungie, Sony Interactive, Unreal and Unity studios of every size | Defense and aerospace simulation, automotive, robotics | Fastest bench, senior people go in days |
| Tools and pipeline engineering | Any studio with a large content team | Fintech platform teams, visual effects, simulation vendors | Fast, widest receiving market |
| Cinematic and character art | Narrative-heavy studios, cinematics vendors | Virtual production, streaming and film, automotive visualization, AR and VR | Slow until the reel is cleared |
| Production and program leadership | Studios mid-project that lost a producer | Technical program management at software companies | Slow, small pool, strong referrals |
Notice what’s thin in the games column. EA says it will try to place affected employees inside EA first, so some of the 50 will never reach the open market. Epic cut about a fifth of its staff in March, and the GDC numbers above say AAA studios generally are in cut mode. The obvious “move to another studio” path is narrower this fall than at any point in the last few years, which pushes more of this talent toward simulation, enterprise software, and consumer tech. Good news if you aren’t a game company.
The Edmonton Question
The closure covers BioWare’s Edmonton workspace, so expect a meaningful share of this group to be in Alberta. Some will relocate for the right offer. Many won’t.
Alberta has a group termination rule, under which an employer ending 50 or more jobs at a single location within four weeks has to give the provincial minister written notice at least four weeks ahead while each employee still gets an individual termination notice, per the Alberta government’s guidance. Bloomberg’s BioWare number is about 50, which sits right on the line. Whether the rule applies is a question for EA’s lawyers, and I won’t guess. The practical effect for you is simpler. Nothing published says how long anyone stays on payroll, so a candidate who looks available on LinkedIn could easily be paid, unhurried, and fielding four other recruiter calls for several more weeks.
If the role is in the U.S., a Canadian citizen can work here under TN status only when the job falls under a defined list of professions in the USMCA, as the USCIS TN page explains. Whether a narrative designer or a cinematic artist fits that list is a question for an immigration attorney, not a recruiter. Making the role remote-eligible sidesteps it, though hiring across the border brings Canadian payroll and tax obligations of its own.
How to Read a BioWare Resume
Start with what shipped. The last year or two of a BioWare resume is probably a project that never reached a player. Strong work, genuinely, but the person can’t point to a retention curve or a review score for it. So ask what they owned on the last game that did ship and what they would change about it, because candidates who built something answer in specifics while candidates who sat near it answer in adjectives.
Titles are loose. “Narrative designer,” “quest designer,” “cinematic designer,” and “writer” cover overlapping and sometimes very different work. Ask for one standalone scene, something that can be read in ten minutes without the game around it, and ask what state the scene reads from. That tells you whether you’re talking to someone who wrote lines or someone who built the branching system.
For engineers, skip the whiteboard. The Frostbite problem means there’s no public work to inspect, so give them a real profiler capture from your own game and twenty minutes. We wrote up how that round works in our game developer interview questions, and it works on engine veterans and designers who code alike.
One more check, and it’s about pace. A decade-long development cycle teaches patience and polish. It doesn’t always teach shipping a feature in three weeks. In April we screened a design lead from a long-running console role-playing project for a mobile studio. Excellent systems mind. In the second round it became clear he had never worked on a build that went to a store in under a year. The studio passed. I’d have passed too, though I liked him a great deal.
What These Candidates Cost in 2026
Federal data doesn’t track game developers as their own occupation. The closest match is software developers, whose median pay was $135,980 in May 2025 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Game engineers sit above that. These are the bands our desk is seeing for engine and gameplay engineering in 2026, base salary only, with Unreal and netcode specialists trending higher and LA and San Francisco higher still.
| Level | Base Salary | Senior Contract Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-level, 3 to 5 years shipping | $115K to $145K | Not applicable |
| Senior | $140K to $190K | $90 to $145 an hour |
| Staff or lead | $200K and up | Priced per search |
Designers and artists are murkier, and I’d rather show you the mess than pretend otherwise. Four aggregators gave us four answers for a video game designer this month.
| Source | Video Game Designer, U.S. |
|---|---|
| Salary.com, August 2026 | About $109,950 average |
| Indeed, October 2026 | About $100,272 average base |
| Glassdoor | About $81,346 median total pay, from 80 submissions |
| Payscale, 2026 | About $73,109 average base |
A spread of nearly $37,000 for the same title. Part of it is seniority mix, part is small samples, and part is that “designer” covers both someone eighteen months out of school and someone who led combat design on a franchise people have heard of. Price by shipped titles and scope, not by the title on the resume. Pricing a specific level and metro? Run our salary benchmark assistant before the offer is drafted. Not after the counter.
If You Have a Req Open Right Now
Timing first. EA’s global town hall is in November and the company says it will try to place people internally, so the first real read on who is available comes after that, not this week. Plan for a November and December close. Engine and tools engineers will go sooner than that, so if one is on your list, make contact now.
Rewrite the title before you post a thing. A narrative designer who sees “Content Writer” assumes you don’t know what they do, and a systems designer who sees plain “Game Designer” reads it as a coin flip on scope, so neither one bothers to apply and find out. “Narrative Designer, Branching Dialogue Systems” or “Senior Systems Designer, Progression and Economy” tells them you read the resume. Our game developer job description template has the structure if you’re starting from scratch.
Not every company should chase these people, by the way. If you run a hyper-casual mobile shop where a game ships in eight weeks, someone who spent six years inside a 40-hour story will be bored by February and gone by June. If the work has no story in it at all, skip the narrative bench. Hire someone who wants your problem.
Unsure buyers can start with contract-to-hire and put a senior designer or engineer on real work before converting. We wrote up that sequencing, contractors first and permanent reqs second, in hiring after layoffs. For scale, KORE1 recruits across 30-plus U.S. metros, an IT search with us averages 17 days from kickoff to accepted offer, and 92 percent of our placements are still on the job at month twelve. Want a second read on the job post first? Send us the req.
Things People Ask After a Studio Closes
Has EA said how many BioWare employees are affected?
EA has not published a count. Bloomberg reports about 400 jobs cut across the company, roughly 3 percent, with around 50 at BioWare, and the staff letter confirms only that BioWare is closing.
That 50 is a reported figure from people familiar with the plans. If EA files notices or gives a number in the November town hall, expect it to move. Don’t build a hiring plan around it.
Is the next Mass Effect really dead, or just paused?
Cancelled, according to BioWare’s own statement that “early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending.”
The coverage we read says nothing about the future of Mass Effect or Dragon Age as franchises, only that this project is over and the studio is closing. Anything beyond that is speculation, including mine.
Which of these people move fastest?
Engine and gameplay engineers, then tools engineers, by a wide margin. Senior people in those two groups are usually spoken for within days of becoming visible.
Designers and artists take longer, mostly because their buyer pool is smaller and portfolios are slow to clear. Producers are slowest. Wrong order for the one you need? Start the conversation anyway.
Can a mid-size studio actually hire a narrative designer from a place like BioWare?
Yes, if the job has real story in it. A narrative designer picks the work over the logo, and a studio that offers authorship of a full branching story can beat a bigger name.
What loses the offer is a vague scope and a three-round interview with a take-home writing test. Ten years of credits don’t need a test. Ask for one finished scene instead.
What about the people in Edmonton, can a U.S. company hire them?
As remote workers, generally yes, though it brings Canadian payroll and tax obligations that an employer of record can handle. Relocating to the U.S. needs work authorization, such as TN status for listed professions.
Whether a particular design or art role fits the TN list is an immigration attorney’s question. We recommend asking before you extend an offer, not after.
Does KORE1 work with displaced game developers directly?
Yes. We represent game developers at no cost to them, and we source for companies hiring across all six benches above.
If you’re coming out of BioWare or any studio that just closed, use the contact form and tell us which bench you sat on and what you shipped. We’ll route you to the right recruiter within a day.
