BioWare Closure: EA Shuts Studio, Cancels Next Mass Effect

Electronic Arts is closing BioWare, the Edmonton studio behind the Mass Effect and Dragon Age role-playing series, and ending early development on the next Mass Effect game in a restructuring that cuts about 400 jobs. The announcement, made in a letter to staff on October 21, makes the BioWare closure the end of one of the longest-running studios in Western game development, according to an internal email obtained by Bloomberg.

The email, from chief operating officer David Tinson and chief studios officer Cam Weber, said executives had taken a hard look at the business and decided to concentrate on the publisher's proven hits, including Apex Legends, Battlefield and the Madden football games. "We've made the decision not to move forward with this development, which means we're closing the studio and our Edmonton workspace," the executives wrote, according to Bloomberg. The cuts total roughly four hundred positions, about three percent of EA's workforce, with around 50 of those jobs at BioWare itself, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported.

What EA is keeping

The restructuring touches almost every corner of EA's portfolio. Development of a Sims franchise project codenamed Project Lotus has been paused, with Maxis instead refocusing on a different Sims effort called Project Evergreen, the executives told staff. The team behind the skateboarding game skate. at Full Circle is being reduced to a smaller group, while the EA Sports football team is developing a social-first open-world title and reviving the Fight Night boxing series, according to a published breakdown of the staff letter.

Some bets survive. EA will continue developing the next Star Wars Jedi title and Marvel's Iron Man, and Respawn Entertainment and DICE are collaborating on a new Star Wars shooter alongside their work on Battlefield and Apex Legends. The company said it would help affected employees explore other opportunities within EA, Reuters reported.

Why the studio fell

The closure comes roughly two months after EA was taken private in a fifty-five-billion-dollar leveraged buyout led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, with Silver Lake and Affinity Partners also involved. The deal, which closed in August, left the publisher with roughly eighteen billion dollars in debt and about one point eight billion dollars a year in interest payments. EA had promised investors seven hundred million dollars in annual cost reductions, including one hundred and seventy million dollars in what the staff letter called organizational efficiencies.

BioWare's recent record gave EA little reason to protect it. The studio's 2019 online shooter Anthem failed commercially after a troubled development, and the team reversed course late on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, stripping out planned live-service elements to release it as a single-player game. EA said Veilguard's sales missed expectations, and the studio was hit by layoffs both before and after its release, according to Kotaku.

A legacy that shaped RPGs

BioWare was founded in 1995 and acquired by EA in 2007. The studio built Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, created Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, launched the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, and ran the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic from 2011. The next Mass Effect game was announced in 2020 but was never shown beyond teasers; the last entry in the series was 2017's Mass Effect: Andromeda.

In a statement posted to its social media accounts, the studio thanked players for more than 30 years of support. The post described BioWare as a home for storytellers and developers and said the games became far more than they would have been on their own because players debated their choices, fell in love with the characters and made those worlds their own. The statement called players "the most meaningful part" of the studio's story.

Two days after the announcement, a trailer for the cancelled Mass Effect game leaked online. The footage, reported by Gadgets 360, showed in-engine material and pre-production assets from the project, including returning characters. With the studio gone, there is no longer any team attached to the franchise.

What comes next at EA

Mass Effect fans had waited six years for a sequel that will now not come from the studio that created the series. For EA, the shutdown concentrates spending on fewer, larger titles with clearer commercial prospects: sports franchises, the Battlefield and Apex shooters, and licensed action games from Star Wars and Marvel. Dragon Age, like Mass Effect, has no announced future. The studio that defined story-driven role-playing for a generation closes with its Edmonton office and its last project.

The news was covered by Polygon and Reuters. For more on the business of games, see genznewz.com's Tech & Games section or the genznewz.com homepage.