EA took the axe to BioWare last week after a long, slow death partially born of mandates to either work on live service games that didn't work (Anthem) or pivot from live service games in messy, chaotic development cycles (Veilguard). A report from Vertical Slice now also claims that its employee morale is at an all-time low.

Speaking to the site's Chris Kerr, choosing to remain anonymous, sources state that "Morale has been terrible. The line we kept hearing is 'do less, better' but it just felt like we were doing the same amount with less people."

It doesn't help that "upper management was very excited about Claude and the possibilities of [generative] AI, much to the chagrin of my team." It's not entirely shocking that generative AI is exciting the executive class—and, to give credit where it's perhaps undue, there are places in which the use of AI could, if applied conservatively, save on busywork.

But in an utterly brutal industry environment, none of these employees seem keen on the idea that management might replace them with AI while not understanding their jobs: "The message from every single manager I've heard is 'this is the future, you have to get onboard'," writes one source, while another adds: "They won't tell you these tools are a mandate, but they'll make it impossible or very difficult for you to do your job without [them]."

Another source in the article claims that there is a sense that "EA executives cannot fail, only be failed.

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