What if you’re celebrating too early?

Layoffs and studio closures are not the cultural victory people are treating them as, and the reason is simple. Look up where these people land.

Follow up to the last video. EA cut around 400 people, roughly 50 of them at BioWare. BioWare is closed, Mass Effect is cancelled, and stories about political discrimination in hiring are coming out. So people are treating it as a win. Dancing on graves. Another entry in get woke go broke.

My read is different, and this is just me analyzing the market. I think these layoffs are mostly about the economic contraction, and about companies chasing efficiency with new technology. EA is its own case because it is now owned by the Saudis, and there is a lot of debt attached to making that deal happen. They are looking at a bottom line and cutting what they consider dead weight. That is the story.

What has not changed is the culture of Western gaming. I have not seen a single example of it changing. Studio closings are not evidence of a cultural shift, because the people involved in those decisions move laterally. You hear me say that all the time. They get rehired inside the same companies, or they go do the same job somewhere else. If anything it is a resume builder.

Take Corinne Busche, game director on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Brought in as director in 2022. Left in 2025, and that departure was voluntary. Where is Busche now? At Skeleton Key, a Wizards of the Coast studio, as creative lead on an unannounced game that is already in production. Dan Ayoub, WotC’s head of digital gaming, confirmed it to Stephen Totilo’s Game File. Some people are speculating that game could be Baldur’s Gate 4, but that part nobody has confirmed.

Lateral movement. If anything, upward.

And to be fair about it, the switch from live service to single player on that game happened before Busche was brought in, so I am not going to pretend to know what role Busche had in the decisions people actually complain about.

This is why you do not see me celebrating. I am looking at the evidence. The departments dedicated to hiring on everything other than merit are still there. The same people are still getting the same jobs or better ones on the same kinds of projects.

So what actually changed, other than a sign coming off a building?

I understand wanting the win. I am a white pill guy. You want to believe there is some normalizing coming. I just do not see it happening across the board. Go ask anybody right of center working in entertainment right now whether they feel like they can be themselves without worrying about getting cancelled. None of them feel that way. They are still operating in secrecy, keeping things tight to the chest, while their political opposites tweet whatever they want with no consequence.

What you want is what I want. A return to normalcy. Back in the day politics did not determine how people moved through their everyday lives the way it does now. That does not mean politics did not matter. It means it was not the first filter on everything.

They have successfully sold the idea that people right of center cannot create, and the only reason that works is that they control the capital and the IPs people already love. They can lay dud after dud and people keep showing up anyway.

So do not treat a studio closing as a victory. That is how you get complacent, and that is how you lose sight of what is actually happening out there. I see it firsthand as a publisher. We hear these stories constantly. That part has not changed.