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Two weeks after literally calling “bullshit” on EA’s decision to close BioWare, immsim legend Warren Spector has posted a follow-up message on LinkedIn that avoids the spicy language but sounds angrier than ever.
“I recently posted my thoughts about EA’s shuttering of BioWare,” Spector wrote. “Those of you who read my post know that I was unhappy. I remain so.
“The tragedy of so many layoffs the last few years hasn’t been lost on me, but for some reason, BioWare hit me on an emotional level nothing before had. I was gut-punched.”
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But some readers, he continued, replied to say that BioWare’s best days were behind it, and that shutting it down was a “sound business decision.” Those reactions appear to have re-stoked Spector’s rage, as he said those people missed his actual complaint: That the game industry executives who are responsible for these problems are never the ones to suffer the consequences.
“If studio-level people leave, resulting in dilution of talent, someone is creating an environment that pushes them out. Do those culture-killers pay any price?” Spector wrote in his new message. “If executives misread the market, over-hire, or make decisions that result in under-funded, over-funded, poorly-marketed games, do they lose sleep, let alone jobs? Do those same executives suffer like developers when the needs of financial partners and investors take precedence over players, does anyone up there care?
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“Is there ANY accountability left in this world?”
Then he took direct aim at Electronic Arts’ C-suite with some very large, ugly numbers:
- Andrew Wilson, chief executive officer: $38.65 million
- Laura Miele, president, EA Entertainment and Central Development: $13.7 million
- Stuart Canfield, chief financial officer: $11.3 million
- Jake Schatz, chief legal officer: $8.4 million
- Mala Singh, chief people officer: $8.3 million
Those figures represent the total compensation given to EA’s executives in its 2026 fiscal year—a single 12-month period. They’re also significant increases over the previous year: Wilson, for instance, got $30.5 million in 2025, while Miele’s was given $9.1 million.
Ironically, those EA executive salaries aren’t even directly related to the BioWare closure. Wilson’s $8 million raise (and all the others), which was awarded in part for “meeting all milestones for a high-quality launch of Battlefield 6,” came just a few months after laying off employees at the studios that made it—Criterion, Dice, Ripple Effect, and Motive—and entirely shuttering Ridgeline Games, which had been working on a new, more story-focused Battlefield game.
“Tens of thousands of do-ers and makers are out of work and these people think they’re worth that kind of compensation?” Spector concluded. “And if you think this is a discussion about ‘sound business decisions’ I hope you never get anywhere near running a business. Or at least that people have the sense not to go work for you.”
Spector’s frustration and anger comes through here even more clearly than it did when he dropped his uncharacteristic curse, because it’s focused: Waving our hands and bemoaning the bullshit might be briefly cathartic, but pointing the finger at these guys over here and saying “this is why” brings the problem into focus like the sun through a magnifying glass.
Sadly, pushback on compensation packages of this size are extremely rare. An analyst report in 2020, when EA shareholders took the unusual step of rejecting a proposed pay hike for the company’s executives, said the failure rate of such proposals was just 2.7% in 2019, and 2.6% in 2018. Wilson was paid more than $21 million that year.