Electronic Arts is closing BioWare, the Canadian studio behind Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In a letter to staff that EA also posted on its website on October 21, the publisher said a small team had been in early development on the next Mass Effect. EA decided not to move forward with that game, and with no project left, the studio and its Edmonton office are shutting down.
For players, it means no new Mass Effect from BioWare. The studio's existing games are still on sale, and EA hasn't said it will pull them. The closure is part of roughly 400 job cuts across EA, about 50 of them at BioWare, Bloomberg reports. EA's letter does not give those numbers.
What EA announced
The letter is signed by chief studios officer Cam Weber and COO David Tinson. It calls BioWare a legendary studio that helped define the RPG, and frames the decision as a change in how EA works: fewer big projects running at the same time and more focus on its core franchises. Battlefield, Apex Legends and EA Sports FC remain priorities, along with the next Star Wars Jedi game and Marvel's Iron Man.
Other changes came in the same memo. Respawn and DICE will team up on an unannounced project that Push Square and other outlets expect to be a new Star Wars Battlefront, a game already at the center of this week's studio rumors. The Sims team is putting "Project Lotus" on hold to focus on "Project Evergreen," skate moves to a smaller team, and EA Sports is working on an open-world American football game and a Fight Night revival.
BioWare's own goodbye on its blog was blunt: "BioWare is closing and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending." The post looks back on three decades of games, from Baldur's Gate to Anthem, and says its focus now is on the team.
The Mass Effect we won't get
The cancelled game was the sequel BioWare teased in 2020 and kept alive with a small core team after its 2025 layoffs. A day after the closure, on October 22, a trailer titled "Mass Effect: Universe" surfaced on Reddit's r/masseffect. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier confirmed on Bluesky that it is genuine, and IGN verified it independently. Who leaked it is unknown.
Built from pre-production assets, the video shows the story heading back to the Milky Way thousands of years after Mass Effect 3, with Liara returning. It ends on a "coming soon" card, which Push Square reads as a sign it was meant for N7 Day, the series' annual celebration on November 7, which will now pass without a reveal.
What happens to the games you own
Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which bundles the original trilogy, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the studio's last release, are still sold on PC and console stores. Both are single-player games, and EA has not said it will delist them or change their online features. It also hasn't said who, if anyone, will handle patches and support now that the team that made them is gone.
The closest precedent is Anthem, another BioWare game. Unlike those two, it required a constant connection, so it stopped working on January 12, 2026, when EA switched off its servers, as TechRadar reported. That shutdown came nine months before the studio's and isn't part of this week's news.
Star Wars: The Old Republic, the 2011 online game, no longer depends on BioWare. Broadsword Online Games has developed and run it since 2023, with EA as publisher, so the closure doesn't switch it off. Its lead writer, Caitlin Sullivan Kelly, said on X it was heartbreaking that the studio's farewell left the game out, as GamesRadar+ noted. No server changes have been announced.
Why EA is doing this
The letter says nothing about sales, but the studio's last known result was weak. In January 2025, the publisher said Dragon Age: The Veilguard had engaged about 1.5 million players in its launch quarter, nearly 50% below expectations, as RPG Site detailed. That miss followed Anthem and a Mass Effect: Andromeda that landed well short of the trilogy's reception.
The closure comes two and a half months after EA stopped trading on the stock market. A consortium led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, alongside Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, closed its $55 billion buyout in August. Nobody involved has explicitly tied the deal to BioWare's closure, and the letter doesn't mention it.
EA says affected employees will get help looking for other roles inside the company, with more detail at its November global town hall. Severance terms haven't been disclosed. Casey Hudson, director of the Mass Effect trilogy, wrote on X that the studio's "legacy will live on through those who were part of it," as PC Gamer reported.
The Amazon series, and what we still don't know
The Mass Effect TV adaptation is still in development at Amazon MGM Studios, according to Prime Video sources cited by IGN. Doug Jung is the showrunner and Daniel Casey is writing. There is no release date or announced cast.
Three questions still lack an official answer: what EA plans for the Mass Effect and Dragon Age brands, which it still owns, who will fix bugs in the released games, and whether the leaked trailer will ever be put out officially.
The conversation starts here
Sign in with a supporter account to comment. Sign in
Nobody has commented yet. Want to go first?