BioWare is laying off 50 people

That's something to think about as well. You'd think EA would have smaller studios that these new writers could do that with, but, then again it's EA....so...probably not. And you're right - I agree that it's probably the entire company facing these issues.

EA is doing cuts at all their studios since the start of the year. They cancelled a bunch of projects and laid off the devs working on them. Hell, their re-organization suggest they want to see if non-sport games actually makes enough money for them and probably flush the entire none-sport division if the ROI isn't what they want.

It might be related with the rumors EA was for sales a while back now that I think about it. Maybe they are just going to sell EA Entertainment (the none sport games branch) and needed to clean-up the finances to make it look palatable.

Even if it is excellent from a story and companion PoV, that would be down to much of the team that has been made redundant, plus likely other individuals who are not so high profile on the technical side who have also been dropped. I was watching a You Tube commentary on the news by someone who apparently works for a small independent game developer and they think the timing is odd in relation to a game for which we don't even have a release date. If the game is still some way off, it does seem odd letting key members of the team go, but if their contribution is pretty much done, why is it so far off release? Also, if the studio maintains that going forward they will be concentrating on what they are known for, single player, narrative driven games, why ditch their best people in this respect?

This commentator did bring up an interesting fact though, which I didn't know about, not being in the industry. It has to do with tax breaks that were formerly available in Canada for the gaming industry with respect to their workforce, but no longer, and the fact that these are available in Austin, Texas. You will recall that during one of their recruitment drives in the past, they were saying how it was no longer necessary to locate to Edmonton, or something like that. So, if this recent round of redundancies is mostly at Edmonton, could this be connected with this financial consideration and that they will be better off shifting their base of operations to Austin or with employees working remotely from the USA?

I read a few, until I realized I was just paying for advertisements for the games.

Why? How many canadians really want to work and therefore live in Austin / Texas ?  Also why not the option to work more remotly at home?

Austin is very "blue". And its crime rate is comparable to Edmonton's. Any reason for a Canadian to not feel safe there would be more due to the ungodly heat compared to the Land of the Male Leaf

Though on a more serious note, part of the problem can probably also be traced to movies and tv doing a spate of reboots, remakes, and distant sequels to beloved franchises that have, at best, divided the base, and at worst have set entire IPs on fire. Adding unknown quantities to writing teams is now viewed upon with suspicion.