The Canadian government is locked in a war of words with U.S.-based Cleveland Cliffs over its decision to close Ontario steelmaker Stelco and eliminate 500 jobs, but it’s nowhere to be found as Electronic Arts shuts down BioWare amid an ongoing bloodbath in the Canadian games industry.
The roughly 50 jobs eliminated last month at the Edmonton-based studio – responsible for blockbuster franchises including Mass Effect and Dragon Age – add to an estimated total between 1,000 and 1,500 development positions lost in Canada just this year. That’s two to three times the number of jobs at the centre of the Stelco dispute.
Aside from BioWare, France’s Ubisoft this year closed studios in Halifax and Winnipeg. Ubisoft, U.S.-based EA and Microsoft’s Bethesda, as well as U.K.-based Eidos, have all cut jobs in Montreal. A report released last year by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) counted 821 game studios operating in Canada in 2023-24, down 78 total or 9 per cent from a peak in 2020-21.
That should be more than enough to trigger an investigation by federal and provincial governments – especially since Canada is one of the most generous jurisdictions in the world when it comes to subsidizing foreign game companies. All of these publishers have used Canadian workers to create and then pull valuable intellectual property out of the country.
