EA Shuts Down BioWare and Kills the Next Mass Effect Two Months After a Saudi-Led Buyout Loaded It With Debt

BioWare is gone. Electronic Arts confirmed on Wednesday that it is closing the studio behind Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, including its Edmonton workspace, and that early development on the next Mass Effect game is over.

The closure is part of a wider round of cuts. Bloomberg reported that about 400 jobs are going, roughly 3% of EA's staff, with around 50 of them at BioWare, according to a person familiar with the plans.

"We do not take this decision lightly"

The news came in a memo from Cam Weber, EA's president and chief studios officer, and David Tinson, its president and COO. According to The Verge, they called BioWare "a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre" and wrote that "we do not take this decision lightly."

The same memo boasts that "today, we're the number one publisher in Western HD gaming." It also says the industry is changing quickly, players have more choices and competition is intensifying. After "a hard look at our business," EA decided not to move forward with the small team working on early development for Mass Effect, "which means we're closing the studio."

BioWare's own farewell was shorter and sadder. "For more than 30 years, BioWare has been more than a studio," it said, listing Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Anthem. "There is nothing easy about writing those words."

Two months after the buyout

The timing is hard to ignore. EA went private in August in a $55 billion deal led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, alongside Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. That deal put around $18 billion of debt on EA's books, and EA had told investors it planned to save up to $700 million, partly by cutting research and development costs, as TNW notes.

EA has not said the debt drove this decision. But a studio with only a small team on an early stage project is exactly the kind of long, uncertain bet that looks expensive when a new owner wants savings. PIF also already owns Savvy Games and has reportedly weighed merging it with EA.

What survives tells you where the money is going. EA keeps its sports machine, including FC, a new social-first open-world American football game called Project Gridiron and a new Fight Night in pre-production. Apex Legends, Battlefield, Marvel's Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game continue. Respawn and DICE will team up on a future project that Bloomberg says is likely a new Star Wars: Battlefront.

BioWare is not the only casualty. The Sims project codenamed Project Lotus is paused so the team can focus on Project Evergreen, and the skate. team is getting smaller. EA says impacted employees will be supported in exploring other roles inside the company, with a Global Town Hall planned for November.

A long slide

BioWare was founded in 1995 and bought by EA in 2007, and it went on to make hits like Mass Effect 2. The run since then was rougher. Mass Effect: Andromeda in 2017 was widely seen as a misstep, the live service bet Anthem in 2019 did not pan out, and EA cut BioWare staff in 2025 after Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed sales expectations.

Fans of the series still have one thread left. IGN reported that the Mass Effect TV series at Amazon is still in development, though Amazon declined to comment.

The wider industry is bleeding too. Xbox went through a "reset" with 3,200 cuts, Bungie announced "significant" layoffs, and Epic Games has laid off more than 1,000 people this year, even as it pushes its teams toward AI, like the Disney shooter group told to stop writing code by hand. BioWare is the most famous name on that list so far, and the next Mass Effect goes with it.

Some offers on this page may be paid placements or contain affiliate links.