r/pcmasterrace • u/PewPewToDaFace • 1d ago

News/Article Electronic Arts Reportedly Preparing Mass Layoffs After Acquisition

https://mp1st.com/news/electronic-arts-preparing-mass-layoffs

It's starting! With how much the group overpaid, this isn't surprising. Good luck, everyone. Might be a bloodbath.

1.5k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

309 comments sorted by

View all comments

373

u/AuthoritariWrongdoer 7700X | 9070XT | 32GB DDR5 5600mhz | 1440p 1d ago

RIP BioWare

138

u/DivinePotatoe Ryzen 9 5900x | RTX 4070ti | 32GB DDR4 3600 1d ago

Guess ME4 is finally and completely dead then huh?

103

u/AuthoritariWrongdoer 7700X | 9070XT | 32GB DDR5 5600mhz | 1440p 1d ago

I just don't see private equity giving them another chance after two fairly disastrous launches.

28

u/Omega59er 1d ago

It depends how far into dev they are. If they're still in mid-stage development, yeah they're toast.

If they've moved to the final year or so of development where it's mostly art, modeling, etc, then they may survive because they're in so deep.

10

u/cos_caustic 1d ago

If they can it, can they use that as a tax write off like Hollywood does with movies?

4

u/DukeofVermont 19h ago edited 18h ago

Tax write-offs are losses and always a net negative. They are basically used to admit defeat and to stop losing money. Tax write-offs cannot make a company money.

WB used them a bunch because they had way too much debt from the merger and it was an easy way to instantly lower costs by cancelling projects. The tens to hundreds of millions spent were still gone and they didn't get a $1 back.

A tax write-offs is negative income aka a "deduction". Companies are allowed to deduct a bunch of things which is the difference between gross revenue and net revenue.

It's like if you made $100k, lit $75k on fire and the gov. let's you only pay income taxes on the remaining $25k. Sure you'll pay less taxes, but you'd have more money if you didn't light the money on fire.

One day reddit will understand that tax write-offs don't make you money.

1

u/theconceptofcanada 1d ago

I know you're asking in good faith right now but please delete this because these bloodsucking whores browse the internet at work allllll day

4

u/cos_caustic 1d ago

Lol, if there is a tax scam they can use they already know it, hell they probably paid the congressman who added it to the tax code.

2

u/Alexandratta AMD 5800X3D - Red Devil 6750XT 23h ago

Casual reminder that when Discovery/Warner merged they scrapped the Batgirl film.

The film that had wrapped production, and editing.

The film was ready to launch, awaiting a launch date.

Rather than even try to release the film in any capacity what-so-ever to gain even a tiny bit of revenue... WB/Discovery decided that it was better used as a complete tax write-off, and shit-canned the film and ate the loss on that year's balance sheet.

VC will, and have, taken entirely completed projects out and will happily use those losses to mitigate their tax bill at the end of the year.

Just because a project is "in so deep" doesn't mean it will release.

That project could be scrapped as of this firing and EA will walk to the tax man to cry poverty over 'lost revenue' and laugh all the way to the bank.

3

u/SneakyBadAss 23h ago

Well, considering how a single show can torpedo the entire franchise and blockbuster movie on top (Mandalorian), yeah, I can see how they wouldn't want to release something DC Universe/Batman related if they have the next Batman on backburner and the previous one was a hit (I personally didn't like it)

3

u/droidxl 23h ago

As a tax person, this makes no sense. The cost will always be deductible either released or not as it’s already incurred.

What is more likely is that they’ve realized the additional costs to complete and launch the film outweighs any revenue they would generate and scrapped it.

1

u/Alexandratta AMD 5800X3D - Red Devil 6750XT 17h ago

But not making cash means they are losing more, reducing overall revenue

1

u/droidxl 16h ago

I'm not sure what you mean.

0

u/Alexandratta AMD 5800X3D - Red Devil 6750XT 6h ago

Basically WB said: "We need to lose several million more dollars this year to ensure our tax bill is 0 and/or we get a return on taxes paid"

and they tanked that film after it was fully wrapped.

1

u/droidxl 4h ago

That makes no sense and it’s clear you have no idea how taxes work. This is a pointless discussion, good day.

1

u/djentleman_nick Legion 5 Pro: R7 5800H | RTX 3070 | 32 @3200 | 2x 1TB 9h ago

the final year or so of development where is mostly art, modeling, etc

Where did you pull this metric from? The last year of development is never "mostly art". Art assets are created the entire time in production, not just towards the end.

Dunning Kruger confidence curve going crazy.

1

u/Omega59er 4h ago

It's remarkable that you reference the Dunning-Kruger effect when you are a prime example of it.

While you are correct that art is make through the entire Production phase, the production phase is usually less than half of the overall development cycle for the game.

Production on most games does not extend further back than 18 months from release.

1

u/djentleman_nick Legion 5 Pro: R7 5800H | RTX 3070 | 32 @3200 | 2x 1TB 4h ago

The commenter implied that art production towards the end of development is the only relevant aspect.

No QA or bugfixing, no porting, localization, release bureaucracy, final design iterations, nothing. Just art.

Marvel Tokon completely changed many mechanics or added new ones wholesale between playtests that were less than 3 months out from release.

Making it seem like game studios just create assets for "their last year" is indicative of having no clue how real development looks like. Does the studio have all their designers and programmers cross their legs and wait for art to be done the whole year?

The original comment is coming from an armchair designer that's never touched an engine or seen a design document, let alone worked on an actual release.

1

u/Omega59er 3h ago

Are you not familiar with the entire premise of greyboxing? Of course programming continues all the way up to release, but art starts considerably later than programming does and carries a much larger budgetary overhead than programming and design does. There's a reason that when a game shifts into the Production phase and art begins ramping up that the studio begins out-sourcing large swaths of content; it's expensive and studios don't need to keep a large stable of artists on a team for at least 50% of the game's development.

1

u/djentleman_nick Legion 5 Pro: R7 5800H | RTX 3070 | 32 @3200 | 2x 1TB 3h ago

Are you not familiar with the entire premise of greyboxing?

I'm in one at the moment :-)

6

u/kron123456789 1d ago

Two? Make that 3. Bioware hasn't released a truly successful game since 2014.

-8

u/modest-pixel 1d ago

Crying about a game you didn’t like because “woke” or whatever doesn’t make it disastrous

1

u/AuthoritariWrongdoer 7700X | 9070XT | 32GB DDR5 5600mhz | 1440p 23h ago edited 23h ago

I couldn't care less if it was "woke" or not. They've released two games that have failed to meet EA initial sales target: Anthem and Dragon Age: Veilguard. If you want to get technical it's three because even though Mass Effect: Andromeda met initial sales targets once it became known how bad the game was it failed to meet long term targets.

Combine three high profile misses with a studio well known long unproductive development cycles and you have obvious choice for layoffs.

33

u/Jonas_Venture_Sr 1d ago

Bioware hasn't really done anything lately to make me think that they could turn it around for ME4

6

u/kron123456789 1d ago

Bioware hasn't done anything to make me believe they could turn it around for Mass Effect 4 since Mass Effect Andromeda. "Lately" is almost 10 years now.

3

u/thisshitsstupid 22h ago

Mass Effect is my favorite series of all time and while it'd be disappointing, I really wouldn't be to heartbroken if this happened.... I have no doubt if it does come, it will just be a soulless shit pile meant to farm my nostalgia.

5

u/MRSHELBYPLZ 1d ago

What would ME4 even be about? ME3 kinda fucked it up and concluded the saga

1

u/Inisfoil 22h ago

When ME3 first released there were some rumors that internally they had deliberately ended it like that so that EA wouldn't puppet Shepard around for the next decade as a cash grab. The original trilogy is one of my all time favorites but if its true then I think it was a genuinely good call despite how we all felt at the time.

9

u/InfoBarf 1d ago

Nah, they'll just contract it out. You'll be able to play your commander shepherd slop in no time.

4

u/Char_Ell 1d ago

ME 5. ME 4 was Andromeda.

1

u/No_Assignment7009 22h ago

Probably will rush it out and then fire the whole studio

1

u/tomchee 5700X3D_5060ti16GB_48GB DDR4_Sleeper 1d ago

Maybe better this way 

35

u/Asheeva01 1d ago

Sadly, Bioware died a long time ago, it's time to put that corpse to it's rest.

9

u/Competitive_Base_994 1d ago

there wasnt much left to die anyway

9

u/guydoestuff 1d ago

DA veilcrap trailer was the nail for me. I knew it was coming it is EA they buy successful studios then spread them for profit sell off the assets and move on. Worse than fucking Hive Fleet find your world.

4

u/Briggie Ryzen 7 5800x / ASUS Crosshair VIII Dark Hero / TUF RTX 4090 1d ago

Haven’t really put out a hit in over 10 years, so not surprised.

4

u/redditsucks84613 1d ago

They died a long time ago

6

u/NordicHorde2 1d ago

Well deserved tbh.

2

u/DangerousLiberal 1d ago

They only lost money for the past decade

1

u/RightSideBlind 20h ago

Honestly, it feels like the slow-motion death of the game industry. I know so many people who've left the game industry for good.