EA Lays Out Restructuring: Fight Night, Gridiron, and Cuts

The memo that confirmed BioWare’s closure today covers a lot more than BioWare, and EA has now posted it publicly under the title “Building EA’s Next Chapter.” Signed by chief studios officer Cam Weber and chief operating officer David Tinson, it lays out three priorities the company is organizing around, which it calls Deepen Our Core, Expand Our Reach, and Transform Our Business, along with a list of portfolio decisions that touch nearly every part of the publisher. The memo doesn’t include any layoff figures, and it says affected employees will be supported in finding other roles within EA, with more discussion planned for a Global Town Hall in November.

On the shooter side, EA calls Battlefield 6 a great success, and it’s bringing Respawn and DICE together to collaborate on a future project that it says will help build out the shooter portfolio alongside future Battlefield games. Apex Legends is getting continued investment over the next few years, including new multiplayer modes and other experiences meant to expand the universe. In action-adventure, Marvel’s Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game are both still on the way, but beyond those two, EA plans to concentrate on fewer simultaneous large-scale projects. The memo places the BioWare decision under that same heading, describing a small team in early development on Mass Effect that EA chose not to move forward with, which means closing the studio and its Edmonton workspace.

EA Sports comes out of the memo with two new projects, both of which are supposed to be detailed over the next few months. The first is Project Gridiron, described as a brand new, social-first open-world experience from the American football team, and the second is a return for Fight Night, which is in pre-production and borrowing from EA’s simulation fighting team. The memo also says EA remains fully committed to the FC franchise and the rest of the EA Sports lineup.

The Sims and skate. round out the list, and both are getting a narrower focus rather than anything new. For The Sims, EA is prioritizing Project Evergreen to give that team more time, and to make that possible, it’s pausing development on Project Lotus. For skate., the memo says the game has done well at bringing players in but needs to keep them around, so Full Circle is moving to what EA calls a more focused, smaller team with a clear roadmap. As I said when Full Circle announced it was “transforming as a studio” back in February, there seems to be an ongoing creative competition in how to announce layoffs, and this is now the second round of changes at the studio this year. All of it comes less than three months after EA’s $55 billion buyout by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners closed on August 4.