EA Closes BioWare After 31 Years and Cancels the Next Mass Effect

In 2007, Commander Shepard first stepped onto the bridge of the Normandy. Nineteen years later, the studio that created Shepard is closing its doors.

On October 21, 2026, Electronic Arts told employees it would cut about 400 jobs, roughly 3% of its workforce, and shut down BioWare. The next Mass Effect, which was in early development, has been cancelled. About 50 BioWare employees are affected, according to Bloomberg. It is EA's first major restructuring since its $55 billion sale to a group led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund closed in August.

What EA said

The announcement came in a letter from COO David Tinson and Chief Studios Officer Cam Weber. "Over the past several months, we've taken a hard look at our business," they wrote.

BioWare posted its own farewell on X. "For more than 30 years, BioWare has been more than a studio," it began.

EA has not said what will happen to the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series beyond the cancellation. The rights stay with EA, so either could return one day from another team, but there is no announced plan.

Thirty-one years of RPGs

Few studios have shaped a genre the way BioWare did. Its games defined Western role-playing on PC and console for two decades:

• Baldur's Gate (1998) and Baldur's Gate II (2000) helped revive Dungeons & Dragons on PC.
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) proved a licensed RPG could tell one of the best stories in the franchise.
• Mass Effect (2007) and its sequels let players carry their choices across a whole trilogy.
• Dragon Age: Origins (2009) became the studio's fantasy flagship.

EA bought BioWare in 2007, and the studio's later years were harder. Anthem (2019) struggled, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024) reportedly fell short of EA's sales expectations, which led to staff reductions in 2025. By the time of the closure, BioWare's team was small, and its main project was the next Mass Effect.

Why now?

The timing is not a coincidence. EA's buyout was financed with about $20 billion of debt, which now sits on EA itself. Bloomberg has reported that EA told lenders it plans about $700 million of annual cost savings. Reports put EA's annual interest bill at roughly $1.8 billion.

In that world, a large single-player RPG in early development, from a studio whose last game underperformed, is the kind of project that is easiest to cut. Debt-funded owners tend to prefer steady earners such as EA SPORTS FC, Madden, The Sims, Apex Legends and Battlefield. (We explain the deal and its pressures in our EA buyout feature.)

BioWare was not EA's only cut this year. In March, EA confirmed layoffs at four studios that worked on Battlefield 6, and in 2025 it cut 300 to 400 staff, including around 100 at Respawn.

Why it matters

BioWare's closure is a loss for a kind of game that is getting rarer: big-budget, story-first RPGs built around player choice. The genre is still alive, as Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have shown, but more and more of it is being made outside the largest publishers.

For EA, the decision says a lot about its priorities after going private. Live services and sports bring in most of its money. Long, risky single-player projects now have to justify themselves against interest payments.

For fans, the hard part is the cancelled Mass Effect. It had been teased since 2020, and now it will not be made, at least not by BioWare. The game's ideas may survive in other studios: former BioWare developers have founded new teams over the years, and more will likely do so now.

What to watch

• The Mass Effect and Dragon Age rights. Any news of another studio taking on either series.
• Further EA cuts. The $700 million savings target is much larger than the savings from 400 jobs.
• New studios. Watch for BioWare veterans launching their own projects. (Our layoffs round-up tracks the year's closures.)