BioWare Closing Its Doors as Next Mass Effect Game Is Scrapped

Electronic Arts is carrying out sweeping cutbacks, including layoffs and the shutdown of BioWare, the veteran studio behind the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. With BioWare closing, the next Mass Effect game, informally referred to as Mass Effect 5 and first announced in 2020, has been scrapped.

In a memo sent to staff on Wednesday, EA chief operating officer David Tinson and chief studios officer Cam Weber said leadership had “taken a hard look at our business.” They said the company will now concentrate on its proven successes, including Apex Legends, Battlefield, and sports titles such as Madden, Bloomberg reports.

Bloomberg says roughly 400 EA employees are losing their jobs, about 50 of them at BioWare.

EA intends to keep working on a new Star Wars Jedi game, Marvel’s Iron Man, and what appears to be a fresh Star Wars Battlefront entry, with Respawn and DICE jointly building the new Star Wars shooter. Meanwhile, the company is “pausing development” on a Sims project codenamed Project Lotus and will redirect its attention to another game in the series, codenamed Project Evergreen.

BioWare’s official social media accounts publicly confirmed the studio’s closure.

“For more than 30 years, BioWare has been more than a studio. It has been a home for storytellers, developers, and the players who brought our worlds to life,” the developer said in a statement. “Now, after more than three decades of shared adventures, BioWare is closing and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending.”

pic.twitter.com/TicSujMWps — BioWare (@bioware) October 21, 2026

Tinson and Weber explained the decision in their memo: “As we focus on these larger opportunities, we’ve had a small team at BioWare working on early-development for Mass Effect,” the executives wrote. “We’ve made the decision not to move forward with this development, which means we’re closing the studio and our Edmonton workspace. BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we do not take this decision lightly.”

Elsewhere in the memo, the pair described Battlefield 6 as “a great success” and promised that EA would “invest heavily in Apex over the next few years by introducing brand-new gameplay modes in multiplayer, and other new experiences, to expand the universe.”

BioWare has struggled under EA in recent years

Founded in 1995, BioWare created several landmark role-playing games, among them the original Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. EA bought the studio in 2007, and under its ownership BioWare went on to deliver multiple hits across the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series.

Scrapping the next Mass Effect is hardly shocking, given that the sci-fi project was reportedly still in its earliest stages. BioWare’s most recent major release, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, fell short of sales expectations. The last all-new Mass Effect game was 2017’s Mass Effect: Andromeda, which drew a mixed reception from critics and players alike. In 2021, BioWare followed up with Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a remastered collection of the first three games.

Electronic Arts went fully private in August, following a joint buyout by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, and Silver Lake. The all-cash deal was valued at $55 billion and left EA carrying roughly $18 billion in debt. After the Saudi-backed acquisition, the company said it would pursue cost-cutting measures aimed at trimming $700 million in annual expenses. Much of that plan hinged on “organizational efficiencies,” worth $170 million in savings, which are now manifesting as widespread layoffs. EA is estimated to have already cut around 970 jobs over the past two years.