BioWare Shutting Down; Next Mainline Mass Effect Officially Canceled

While this has seemed like a possibility for a while now, EA has officially announced that famed RPG developer BioWare will be shutting down. Bloomberg reports that the studio is closing amid mass layoffs across Electronic Arts, amounting to around 400 people losing their jobs (3% of EA’s overall workforce), with 50 of those jobs being at BioWare.

BioWare has spent the better part of the decade struggling to deliver on several promises. The first was the live-service title Anthem, which underperformed. The studio was also working on a new Dragon Age title for much of that time as well, originally planning for it to have a live-service focus, before releasing it as Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a single-player title, to lackluster sales as well. It is easy to forget that back in 2014, Dragon Age: Inquisition became the first title to win Game of the Year at Geoff Keighley’s Video Game Awards.

During this time, BioWare had also been teasing a new mainline entry in the Mass Effect series, which was first announced back in 2020. It would have featured the original trilogy’s Milky Way setting, though it would have been set hundreds of years after the Reaper threat that Commander Shepard fought to stop. Now, fans will never know what that could have looked like, as this entry has been officially cancelled by EA as well.

While much of the company is affected by these layoffs, the publisher has announced they will remain committed to several of their franchises. This includes their many sports titles, Respawn’s Apex Legends, as well as action titles like Star Wars: Jedi 3, Marvel’s Iron Man, and Battlefield. While these projects will live on, the company has stated that players should expect “fewer simultaneous, large-scale projects” from the publisher in the future. In the “Lifestyle” category, as EA calls it, Project Evergreen will continue in development, but Project Lotus has been paused.

This news follows shortly after EA went private in a leveraged buyout worth $55 billion. This was backed in large part by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, as well as by the U.S. private equity firm Silver Lake, as well as Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. Bioware was founded in 1995 and is known for titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur’s Gate, Mass Effect, and more.

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