BioWare lays off senior writing staff as part of its recent job cuts

Just weeks following the launch of Immortals of Aveum, developer Ascendant Studios has laid off approximately 45% of its team, according to a report by Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter and testimony from some of the impacted employees. Ascendant CEO Bret Robbins explained the layoffs in a Twitter post as “a painfully difficult, but necessary decision that was not made lightly.”

Ascendant Studios has laid off nearly half of its staff less than a month after the launch ofImmortals of Aveum due to poor sales.

Ascendant Studios, the developer behind the EA published Immortals of Aveum, has laid off almost half of its staff.

Just a few weeks after the release of its debut game Immortals of Aveum, a fantasy FPS that replaces guns with magical spells (that feel mostly like guns), Ascendant Studios has laid off nearly half its staff.

Immortals of Aveum hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC just weeks ago. We had a great time with it, giving it an 8 out of 10 in our review. Today, developer Ascendant Studios laid off approximately 45 percent of its staff. 

Everyone remembers the lovely romantic relationships in Dragon Age, but the series’ former lead writer, David Gaider, actually wasn’t a fan of writing these intimate storylines at first.

Baldur's Gate 3 was released around a month ago to massive critical and commercial acclaim. In case that wasn't enough, Larian Studios got the approval of cRPG veteran David Gaider, who worked on Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and all of the Dragon Age games. Gaider said on Twitter that Baldur's Gate 3 managed to resurrect the feeling of the first two installments in every way, proving to be a worthy successor.

Over the past week, dataminers have been rifling through Baldur's Gate 3's code and have discovered a dragon's hoard of alleged "cut content". It's hard to specify what they've unearthed without accidentally sounding the Major Spoilers trumpet and initiating Armageddon, but the supposed buried offerings include additional areas, swathes of dialogue, storylines, cutscenes, characters, romance opportunities and even deities. Given just how much Larian's gargantuan RPG gives you to play with, I am kind of thankful for a generous amount of stuff being "left out" - certainly, I don't need any more romanceable NPCs, I'm already fending them off with a broomhandle. But the news has gone down badly with a few players, and especially those who feel the game's overall quality takes a dive in acts 2 and 3.

Developer Blackbird Interactive has announced that it has laid off more than 40 employees. The layoffs come in light of several of the studio’s upcoming projects getting cancelled. The layoffs came to light thanks to a post on LinkedIn by former technical artist at Blackbird Interactive James Marshall, who revealed that more than 40 people were laid off from the studio. A spokesperson for the studio released a statement, according to IGN, confirming that 41 employees were let go.

Baldur's Gate veteran and Dragon Age creator David Gaider has outlined their experience with cut content, after Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian addressed the issue in a recent update. 

Imagendary Studios has "deeply restructured" with its future in significant question, according to a now-former employee posting on LinkedIn last week.

BioWare recently announced that it will be letting go of around 50 employees in a fresh round of layoffs, as it looks to become a more “agile” studio, and as it turns out, the list of people who’ll be departing the company as a result includes quite a few notable ones.