Update
Kotaku's Jason Schreier has said on Twitter that he has received word from several BioWare employees that an email has been sent to them essentially saying, "Don't talk to the press".
On a related note, I'm told by a couple of BioWare employees that so far, studio management hasn't talked to staff about the article. Instead, the company sent out emails yesterday with one main message: "Don't talk to the press."
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) April 3, 2019
Original story
After the bombshell Kotaku article yesterday that revealed deep problems in the working environment at BioWare, studio General Manager Casey Hudson sent out an internal memo to staff acknowledging the article. He acknowledges that the issues are present and that "it's our top priority to continue working to solve them". Hudson then goes on to talk about efforts already underway to ease some of the top level concerns, but mentions that "there's much more to do".
When I was offered the opportunity to return to BioWare as GM, I came into the role knowing the studio was experiencing significant challenges in team health, creative vision, and organizational focus. I was - and continue to be - excited to help drive improvements in those areas because I love this studio, and above all I want to create a place where all of you are happy and successful.
I’m not going to tell you I’ve done a good job at that, and on a day like today I certainly feel like I haven’t. But some of the steps we’ve taken towards this include a more focused studio mission and values, so that we have clarity on what we are here to do and how we define a high standard for our studio culture. We updated our studio structure around a matrix so that department directors can be fully focused on individual career support and well-being. We are defining better role clarity so that people can succeed better against clear expectations. And we are putting in place production changes that will provide for clearer project vision as well as a significant post-production period that will further relieve pressure and anxiety on teams during development.
But I know there’s much more to do, and we will talk in more detail about other actions we have been planning in response to internal feedback and postmortems at next week’s All-Hands. As always please continue to provide feedback on further steps we can take to make BioWare the best possible place to work.
Read the letter in its entirety over at Kotaku.
What do you think of Hudson's words? Should something similar to this have been the response from BioWare instead of the one given yesterday?
