EA shuts down BioWare and cancels the next Mass Effect
The company cuts about 400 jobs after its $55 billion buyout and also scraps a Sims project.
EA announced Wednesday that it is shutting down BioWare, the studio behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and canceling the next game in the space saga. The closure includes its offices in Edmonton, Alberta, the Canadian city where the studio was founded more than three decades ago.
BioWare confirmed it on social media: the studio is closing and development of the new Mass Effect has stopped. A small team was working on the early stages of what would have been the fifth main game. As recently as November 2025, the studio was still saying that EA and BioWare remained committed to a new Mass Effect.
EA frames the decision as a reorganization to concentrate resources on fewer projects and on franchises with more room to grow.
The total cut is about 400 jobs, close to 3% of EA's workforce.
The news came in a letter from executive David Tinson to all staff. The company also cancels a Sims project, code-named Project Lotus, leaving only Project Evergreen. Skate is still in development, though Full Circle, the studio making it, loses part of its team.
The closure comes about two months after EA went private in a $55 billion buyout led by Saudi Arabia's PIF fund together with Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. The deal left the company with $18 billion in debt and a promise to investors of $700 million in annual savings. No one has said that debt directly caused the closure, though the cuts come in that context.
BioWare joined EA in 2007. Anthem (2019) was a financial failure, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a single-player game, sold below expectations, EA says. The company has not said what it will do with the Mass Effect and Dragon Age licenses.
BioWare said goodbye with a message: "What generations of BioWare built together is something to celebrate and remember."
