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Los Angeles Times
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Inside the ‘Dragon Age' debacle that gutted EA's BioWare Studio
In early November, on the eve of the holiday shopping season, staffers at the video game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard,' and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales charts on Steam, and solid, if not spectacular, reviews were rolling in. But in the weeks that followed, the early buzz cooled as players delved deeper into the fantasy world, and some BioWare employees grew anxious. For months, everyone at the subsidiary of the video game publisher Electronic Arts had been under intense pressure. The studio's previous two games, 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' and 'Anthem,' had flopped, and there were rumors that if 'Dragon Age' underperformed, BioWare might become another of EA's many casualties. Not long after Christmas, the bad news surfaced. EA announced in January that the new 'Dragon Age' had reached only 1.5 million players, missing the company's expectations by 50%. The holiday performance of another recently released title, 'EA Sports FC 25,' was also subpar, compounding the problem. As a result of the struggling titles, EA Chief Executive Officer Andrew Wilson said, the company would be significantly lowering its sales forecast for the fiscal year ahead. EA's share price promptly plunged 18%. ''Dragon Age' had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played,' Wilson said on an earnings call. 'However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.' Days after the sales revision, EA laid off a chunk of BioWare's staff at the studio's headquarters in Edmonton, Canada, and permanently transferred many of the remaining workers to other divisions. For the storied, 30-year-old game maker, it was a stunning fall that left many fans wondering how things had gone so haywire — and what might come next for the stricken studio. According to interviews with nearly two dozen people who worked on 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard,' there were several reasons behind its failure, including marketing misfires, poor word of mouth and a 10-year gap since the previous title. Above all, sources point to the rebooting of the product from a single-player game to a multiplayer one — and then back again — a switch that muddled development and inflated the title's budget, they say, ultimately setting the stage for EA's potentially unrealistic sales expectations. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment. The union between BioWare and EA started off with lofty aspirations. In 2007, EA executives announced they were acquiring BioWare and another gaming studio in a deal worth $860 million. The goal was to diversify their slate of games, which was heavy in sports titles, such as 'Madden NFL,' and light in the kind of adventure and role-playing games that BioWare was known for. Initially, it looked like a smart move thanks to a string of big hits. In 2014, BioWare released 'Dragon Age: Inquisition,' the third installment in a popular action series dropping players in a semi-open world full of magic, elves and fire-spewing dragons. The fantasy title won the Game of the Year award and sold 12 million copies, according to its executive producer Mark Darrah — a major validation of EA's diversification strategy. Before long, Darrah and Mike Laidlaw, the creative director, began kicking around ideas for the next 'Dragon Age' installment, aiming for a game that would be smaller in scope. But before much could get done, BioWare shifted the studio's focus to more pressing titles coming down the pike. In 2017, BioWare released 'Mass Effect: Andromeda,' the fourth installment in a big-budget action series set in space. Unlike its critically successful predecessors, the game received mediocre reviews and was widely mocked by fans. A few months after the disappointing release, the head of BioWare stepped down and was soon replaced by Microsoft's Casey Hudson, an alumnus of BioWare's early, formative years. Like much of the industry, EA executives were growing increasingly enamored of so-called live-service games, such as 'Destiny' and 'Overwatch,' in which players continue to engage with and spend money on a title for months or even years after its initial release. With EA aiming to make a splash in the fast-growing category, BioWare poured resources into 'Anthem,' a live-service shooter game that checked all the right boxes. One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whiskey. The next 'Dragon Age' sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game — a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved. 'I wish that pivot had never occurred,' Darrah would later recount on YouTube. 'EA said, 'Make this a live service.' We said, 'We don't know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.'' Former art director Matt Goldman replaced Laidlaw as creative director, and with a tiny team began pushing ahead on a new multiplayer version of 'Dragon Age' while everyone else helped to finish 'Anthem,' which was struggling to coalesce. Goldman pushed for a 'pulpy,' more lighthearted tone than previous entries, which suited an online game but was a drastic departure from the dark, dynamic stories that fans loved in the fantasy series. In February 2019, BioWare released 'Anthem.' Reviews were scathing, calling the game tedious and convoluted. Fans were similarly displeased. On social media, players demanded to know why a studio renowned for beloved stories and characters had made an online shooter with a scattershot narrative. In the wake of BioWare's second consecutive flop, the multiplayer version of 'Dragon Age' continued to take shape. While the previous games in the franchise had featured tactical combat, this one would be all action. Instead of quests that players would experience only once, it would be full of missions that could be replayed repeatedly with friends and strangers. Important characters couldn't die because they had to persist for multiple players across never-ending gameplay. As the game evolved over the next two years, the failure of 'Anthem' hovered over the studio. Were they making the same mistakes? Some BioWare employees scoffed that they were simply building ''Anthem' with dragons.' Throughout 2020, the pandemic disrupted the game's already fraught development. In December, Hudson, the head of the studio, and Darrah, the head of the franchise, resigned. Shortly thereafter, Gary McKay, BioWare's new studio head, revealed yet another shift in strategy. Moving forward, the next 'Dragon Age' would no longer be multiplayer. 'We were thinking, 'Does this make sense, does this play into our strengths, or is this going to be another challenge we have to face?'' McKay told Bloomberg News. 'No, we need to get back to what we're really great at.' In theory, the reversion back to the series' tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game's fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible. This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they'd be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working. At the end of 2022, amid continually dizzying leadership changes, the studio started distributing an 'alpha' build of 'Dragon Age' to get feedback internally and from outside playtesters. According to people familiar with the process, the reactions were concerning. The game's biggest problem, early players agreed, was a lack of satisfying choices and consequences. Previous BioWare titles had presented players with gut-wrenching decisions. Which allies to save? Which factions to spare? Which enemies to slay? Such dilemmas made fans feel like they were shaping the narrative — historically, a big draw for many BioWare games. But the multiplayer roots of 'Dragon Age' limited such choices, according to people familiar with the development. BioWare delayed the game's release again while the team shoehorned in a few major decisions, such as which of two cities to save from a dragon attack. But because most of the parameters were already well established, the designers struggled to pair the newly retrofitted choices for players with meaningful consequences downstream. In 2023, to help finish game, BioWare brought in a second, internal team, which was working on the next 'Mass Effect.' For decades there'd been tension between the two well-established camps, known for their starkly divergent ways of doing things. BioWare developers like to joke that the 'Dragon Age' crew was like a pirate ship, meandering and sometimes traveling off course but eventually reaching the port. In contrast, the 'Mass Effect' group was called the USS Enterprise, after the 'Star Trek' ship, because commands were issued straight from the top and executed zealously. As the 'Mass Effect' directors took control, they scoffed that the 'Dragon Age' squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings, according to people familiar with the internal friction. Over time, the 'Mass Effect' team went on to overhaul parts of the game and design a number of additional scenes, including a rich, emotional finale that players loved. But even changes that appeared to improve the game stoked the simmering rancor inside BioWare, infuriating 'Dragon Age' leaders who had been told they didn't have the budget for such big, ambitious swings. 'It always seemed that, when the 'Mass Effect' team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,' said David Gaider, a former lead writer on the 'Dragon Age' franchise who left before development of the new game started. 'But 'Dragon Age' always had to fight against headwinds.' Early testers and 'Mass Effect' leads complained about the game's snarky tone — a style of video game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman's vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that 'Dragon Age' could face the same outcome as 'Forspoken' — a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter — BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game's dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game's poor reception with fans.) A mass layoff at BioWare and a mandate to work overtime depleted morale while a voice actors' strike limited the writers' ability to revise the dialogue and create new scenes. An initial trailer made the next 'Dragon Age' seem more like 'Fortnite' than a dark fantasy role-playing game, triggering concerns that EA didn't know how to market the game. When 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' finally premiered on Halloween after many internal delays, some staff members thought there was a lot to like, including the game's new combat system. But players were less impressed, and sales sputtered. 'The reactions of the fan base are mixed, to put it gently,' said Caitie, a popular 'Dragon Age' YouTuber. 'Some, like myself, adore it for various reasons. Others feel utterly betrayed by certain design choices.' Following the layoffs and staff reassignments at BioWare earlier in the year, a small team of a few dozen employees is working on the next 'Mass Effect.' After three high-profile failures in a row, questions linger about EA's commitment to the studio. In May, the company relabeled its Edmonton headquarters from a BioWare office to a hub for all EA staff in the area. Historically, BioWare has never been the most important studio at EA, which generates more than $7 billion in annual revenue largely from its sports games and shooters. Depending on the timing of its launches, BioWare typically accounts for just 5% of EA's annual bookings, according to estimates by Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Even so, there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare. Single-player role-playing games are expensive to make but can lead to huge windfalls when successful, as demonstrated by recent hits such as 'Cyberpunk 2077,' 'Elden Ring' and 'Baldur's Gate 3.' In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises, said TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz. Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new. 'That said, if they shuttered the doors tomorrow I wouldn't be totally surprised,' Creutz added. 'It has been over a decade since they produced a hit.' Schreier writes for Bloomberg.
The Star
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Inside the 'Dragon Age' debacle that gutted EA's BioWare studio
In early November, on the eve of the crucial holiday shopping season, staffers at the video-game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard , and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales charts on Steam, and solid, if not spectacular, reviews were rolling in. But in the weeks that followed, the early buzz cooled as players delved deeper into the fantasy world, and some BioWare employees grew anxious. For months, everyone at the subsidiary of the video-game publisher Electronic Arts Inc had been under intense pressure. The studio's previous two games, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem , had flopped, and there were rumors that if Dragon Age underperformed, BioWare might become another of EA's many casualties. Not long after Christmas, the bad news surfaced. EA announced in January that the new Dragon Age had only reached 1.5 million players, missing the company's expectations by 50%. The holiday performance of another recently released title, EA Sports FC 2025 , was also subpar, compounding the problem. As a result of the struggling titles, EA chief executive officer Andrew Wilson explained, the company would be significantly lowering its sales forecast for the fiscal year ahead. EA's share price promptly plunged 18%. ' Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played,' Wilson later said on an earnings call. 'However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.' Days after the sales revision, EA laid off a chunk of BioWare's staff at the studio's headquarters in Edmonton, Canada, and permanently transferred many of the remaining workers to other divisions. For the storied, 30-year-old game maker, it was a stunning fall that left many fans wondering how things had gone so haywire – and what might come next for the stricken studio. According to interviews with nearly two dozen people who worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard , there were several reasons behind its failure, including marketing misfires, poor word of mouth and a 10-year gap since the previous title. Above all, sources point to the rebooting of the product from a single-player game to a multiplayer one – and then back again – a switcheroo that muddled development and inflated the title's budget, they say, ultimately setting the stage for EA's potentially unrealistic sales expectations. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment. The union between BioWare and EA started off with lofty aspirations. In 2007, EA executives announced they were acquiring BioWare and another gaming studio in a deal worth US$860mil. The goal was to diversify their slate of games, which was heavy in sports titles, like Madden NFL , and light in the kind of adventure and role-playing games that BioWare was known for. Initially, it looked like a smart move thanks to a string of big hits. In 2014, BioWare released Dragon Age: Inquisition , the third installment in a popular action series dropping players in a semi-open world full of magic, elves and fire-spewing dragons. The fantasy title went on to win the much-coveted Game of the Year Award and sell 12 million copies, according to its executive producer Mark Darrah – a major validation of EA's diversification strategy. Before long, Darrah and Mike Laidlaw, the creative director, began kicking around ideas for the next Dragon Age installment – code name: Joplin – aiming for a game that would be smaller in scope. But before much could get done, BioWare shifted the studio's focus to more pressing titles coming down the pike. In 2017, BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda , the fourth installment in a big-budget action series set in space. Unlike its critically successful predecessors, the game received mediocre reviews and was widely mocked by fans. A few months after the disappointing release, the head of BioWare stepped down and was soon replaced by Microsoft Inc's Casey Hudson, an alumni of BioWare's early, formative years. Like much of the industry, EA executives were growing increasingly enamoured of so-called live-service games, such as Destiny and Overwatch , in which players continue to engage with and spend money on a title for months or even years after its initial release. With EA aiming to make a splash in the fast-growing category, BioWare poured resources into Anthem , a live-service shooter game that checked all the right boxes. One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whisky. The next Dragon Age sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game – a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved. 'I wish that pivot had never occurred,' Darrah would later recount on YouTube. 'EA said, 'Make this a live service'. We said, 'We don't know how to do that. We should basically start the project over'.' Former art director Matt Goldman replaced Laidlaw as creative director, and with a tiny team began pushing ahead on a new multiplayer version of Dragon Age – code name: Morrison – while everyone else helped to finish Anthem , which was struggling to coalesce. Goldman pushed for a 'pulpy', more lighthearted tone than previous entries, which suited an online game but was a drastic departure from the dark, dynamic stories that fans loved in the fantasy series. In February 2019, BioWare released Anthem . Reviews were scathing, calling the game tedious and convoluted. Fans were similarly displeased. On social media, players demanded to know why a studio renowned for beloved stories and characters had made an online shooter with a scattershot narrative. In the wake of BioWare's second consecutive flop, the multiplayer version of Dragon Age continued to take shape. While the previous games in the franchise had featured tactical combat, this one would be all action. Instead of quests that players would only experience once, it would be full of missions that could be replayed repeatedly with friends and strangers. Important characters couldn't die because they had to persist for multiple players across never-ending gameplay. As the game evolved over the next two years, the failure of Anthem hovered over the studio. Were they making the same mistakes? Some BioWare employees scoffed that they were simply building ' Anthem with dragons'. Throughout 2020, the pandemic disrupted the game's already fraught development. In December, Hudson, the head of the studio, and Darrah, the head of the franchise, resigned. Shortly thereafter, Gary McKay, BioWare's new studio head, revealed yet another shift in strategy. Moving forward, the next Dragon Age would no longer be multiplayer. 'We were thinking, 'Does this make sense, does this play into our strengths, or is this going to be another challenge we have to face?'' McKay later told Bloomberg News. 'No, we need to get back to what we're really great at.' In theory, the reversion back to Dragon Age 's tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game's fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible. This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they'd be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working. At the end of 2022, amid continually dizzying leadership changes, the studio started distributing an 'alpha' build of Dragon Age to get feedback internally and from outside playtesters. According to people familiar with the process, the reactions were concerning. The game's biggest problem, early players agreed, was a lack of satisfying choices and consequences. Previous BioWare titles had presented players with gut-wrenching decisions. Which allies to save? Which factions to spare? Which enemies to slay? Such dilemmas made fans feel like they were shaping the narrative – historically, a big draw for many BioWare games. But Dragon Age 's multiplayer roots limited such choices, according to people familiar with the development. BioWare delayed the game's release again while the team shoehorned in a few major decisions, such as which of two cities to save from a dragon attack. But because most of the parameters were already well established, the designers struggled to pair the newly retrofitted choices for players with meaningful consequences downstream. In 2023, to help finish Dragon Age , BioWare brought in a second, internal team, which was working on the next Mass Effect game. For decades there'd been tension between the two well-established camps, known for their starkly divergent ways of doing things. BioWare developers like to joke that the Dragon Age crew was like a pirate ship, meandering and sometimes travelling off course but eventually reaching the port. In contrast, the Mass Effect group was called the USS Enterprise, after the Star Trek ship, because commands were issued straight down from the top and executed zealously. As the Mass Effect directors took control, they scoffed that the Dragon Age squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings, according to people familiar with the internal friction. Over time, the Mass Effect team went on to overhaul parts of the game and design a number of additional scenes, including a rich, emotional finale that players loved. But even changes that appeared to improve the game stoked the simmering rancor inside BioWare, infuriating Dragon Age leaders who had been told they didn't have the budget for such big, ambitious swings. 'It always seemed that, when the Mass Effect team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,' said David Gaider, a former lead writer on the Dragon Age franchise who left before development of the new game started. 'But Dragon Age always had to fight against headwinds.' Early testers and Mass Effect leads complained about the game's snarky tone – a style of video-game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman's vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that Dragon Age could face the same outcome as Forspoken – a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter – BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game's dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game's poor reception with fans.) A mass layoff at BioWare and a mandate to work overtime depleted morale while a voice actors strike limited the writers' ability to revise the dialogue and create new scenes. An initial trailer made the next Dragon Age seem more like Fortnite than a dark fantasy role-playing game, triggering concerns that EA didn't know how to market the game. When Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally premiered on Halloween 2024 after many internal delays, some staff members thought there was a lot to like, including the game's new combat system. But players were less impressed, and sales sputtered. 'The reactions of the fan base are mixed, to put it gently,' said Caitie, a popular Dragon Age YouTuber. 'Some, like myself, adore it for various reasons. Others feel utterly betrayed by certain design choices.' Following the layoffs and staff reassignments at BioWare earlier in the year, a small team of a few dozen employees is now working on the next Mass Effect . After three high-profile failures in a row, questions linger about EA's commitment to the studio. In May, the company relabeled its Edmonton headquarters from a BioWare office to a hub for all EA staff in the area. Historically, BioWare has never been the most important studio at EA, which generates more than US$7bil (RM29.70bil) in annual revenue largely from its sports games and shooters. Depending on the timing of its launches, BioWare typically accounts for just 5% of EA's annual bookings, according to estimates by Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Even so, there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare. Single-player role-playing games are expensive to make but can lead to huge windfalls when successful, as demonstrated by recent hits like Cyberpunk 2077 , Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 . In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises, said TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz. Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new. 'That said, if they shuttered the doors tomorrow I wouldn't be totally surprised,' Creutz added. 'It has been over a decade since they produced a hit.' – Bloomberg
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ex-BioWare Lead Says The Dragon Age Team Didn't Feel Supported During Veilguard Development
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways It's no secret that the game that would become Dragon Age: The Veilguard had a troubled development. However, every time a new story comes out about how studio in-fighting and corporate favoritism affected the project, it feels like more of a miracle that the fantasy RPG got out the door looking like a classic BioWare game. Mark Darrah, the former executive producer of the Dragon Age series, has released a new YouTube video in which he discusses how a few events in 2017 fundamentally changed the trajectory of the RPG studio and how, according to him, Dragon Age was thrown under the bus in more ways than one during this time. Darrah's 16-minute video runs down how things shifted at BioWare in the months leading up to Mass Effect: Andromeda's launch in 2017, a period of change that he calls 'the most impactful 12 months' in the studio's history. In late 2016 Darrah, who had been working on Dragon Age, began instead leading the team that would oversee the closing months of the sci-fi RPG's development cycle. He explains that his transfer felt like a blow to the Dragon Age team, which was then working on one of the early iterations of the fantasy series' fourth entry, as Darrah had been a key member of its leadership. However, Darrah thought that by helping ship Andromeda, he could then see the resources dedicated to the game reallocated to help the Dragon Age team develop the fantasy RPG. But unfortunately, that's not what happened. 'My feeling at the time was the Dragon Age team was feeling jerked around,' Darrah says in the video. 'They were feeling like we were getting no support from BioWare or from [publisher] EA, which was basically true.' Darrah says his coming on to help with Andromeda was irregular at the time, as it was the first time the studio had a 'leadership discontinuity,' in which a person in charge of one project that was in active development left it to work on another. Darrah says the short time he spent working on Andromeda didn't ultimately have much of an impact on Dragon Age's development, but it did set a precedent establishing that leadership could be moved around within the company, even if they were in the middle of directing something else. This move contributed to a perception that Dragon Age wasn't a priority within the company. Darrah goes on to explain how the relationship between BioWare and EA changed at this time, as the studio started reporting to a different arm of the publisher. Prior to this, BioWare was 'strangely' reporting to higher-ups in the company's sports section, a group which Darrah described as 'benignly disinterested,' allowing the studio to work more autonomously. Then, when things shifted in 2017, BioWare started reporting to a branch of EA that was 'hyper interested' in the decision-making process. According to Darrah, this change in leadership was likely part of why the studio moved on from Andromeda so quickly, canceling the game's planned DLC and putting the sci-fi series on ice. 'The group that we reported into had very little stake in either the success or the failure of [Mass Effect: Andromeda], and they had a lot more incentive for BioWare to move on to the next thing that they could tie themselves to and show themselves as having influence on the development of,' Darrah said. As BioWare geared up for the next game, the much-maligned looter shooter Anthem, Darrah says he received 'assurances' from EA and BioWare leadership that Dragon Age was important to the company, but not the kinds of developers and resources that would back those statements up. And it was all made a lot more complicated by the return of ex-Mass Effect director Casey Hudson, who rejoined the company as its general manager in 2017. Darrah says he learned about Hudson's return at the same time as the rest of the company, despite being a senior member of BioWare's leadership team. He says he considered the decision to bring Hudson back without consulting him a sign of 'an immense amount of disrespect,' and he sent emails shortly after the announcement that said he expected Hudson would make a call to 'starve' Dragon Age of resources as the studio went all-hands-on-deck on Anthem. Darrah was once again reassured by leadership that Dragon Age was important to the company and that they were committed to him leading the project. 'As we all know, that's not what happened at all,' Darrah says. 'In very short order, in basically exactly the way that I predicted, Anthem was seen as needing greater leadership support, and myself and some other very senior people, and a large percentage of the Dragon Age team, was moved onto Anthem.' This was followed by the scaling down of BioWare's Montreal studio, which saw many staff members moved to other teams across the EA umbrella. Darrah says that the Montreal team had 'basically been lied to' and were told that the Dragon Age team 'didn't want' them. He also claims that he was trying to get the next Dragon Age past a certain development threshold which he hoped might allow him to retain those developers, but EA higher-ups who were local in Montreal wanted those people, and 'proximity is a powerful tool.' 'If you are someone who's been mad at me since 2017 because you feel like I abandoned you in Montreal, know that that's not what happened,' Darrah says. 'Know that I fought with every tool that I knew how to wield to try and keep you, but the organization had no interest in that occurring.' Whatever the circumstances, Darrah says EA wasn't interested in helping the Dragon Age team grow; it wanted Anthem to get off the ground and be a huge live-service hit for the company. Darrah hypothesizes that, at this point, management pivoted the Dragon Age project into the now-scrapped live-service game as a 'rationalization' for removing many members of the team and putting them to work on Anthem. Now that the next Dragon Age was going back to the drawing board, it could be argued that the project didn't need that big of a team in its early production stages. The move also resulted in a longer 'leadership discontinuity,' as Darrah worked on Anthem until the game shipped in 2019. 'I talked a fairly long time ago about how EA buys studios and then consumes them and they start to lose their culture into the overall EA culture,' Darrah said. 'To me, it feels like 2017 is when EA finished digesting BioWare, which they had bought nine years earlier in 2008.' Darrah acknowledges that much of his story might sound like a series of events that affected him personally rather than the studio at large, but a handful of ex-BioWare employees have shared the video on social media and corroborated the events described. Darrah's claims also line up with Kotaku's previous reporting on Anthem's development, in which sources told us about how the loot shooter took up much of the company's resources, further complicating the development of what would eventually become Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Darrah left BioWare in 2020, but returned to consult onThe Veilguard in 2023. After 10 years of tortured development, that game finally launched in 2024 as a single-player, story-driven RPG and was divisive in the ways Dragon Age games often are. In January, BioWare was restructured to be a one-game studio, resulting in layoffs for some of the company's veteran talent. The team that remains is working on Mass Effect 5. 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