Video game publisher Electronic Arts is closing the venerable studio BioWare, maker of legendary series like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, it announced on Wednesday.
Recent years have seen record layoffs across the gaming industry as companies scaled back expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic, disrupting tens of thousands of careers and closing many studios. The shuttering of BioWare is a symbolic and substantial blow, presumably ending multiple fervently adored game series and carrying implications for the industry at large. The closure reportedly involves around 400 layoffs, about 50 of which were at BioWare
EA confirmed in a blog post Wednesday that the closure of BioWare accompanies the choice to stop development on the next game in the Mass Effect series, which BioWare first teased on Nov. 7, 2020 — otherwise known as N7 Day to fans, an in-universe reference that has become an annual day to share appreciation for the sci-fi roleplaying series.
It hasn’t been lost on fans that the shuttering of the 31-year-old studio comes just weeks before N7 Day, and social media has been awash with mourning for the many franchises that came out of BioWare.
The studio made a name for itself with Baldur’s Gate in 1998, its sequel Baldur’s Gate 2 and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic before branching into original game series with Jade Empire in 2005, the first Mass Effect in 2007 and Dragon Age: Origins in 2009.
BioWare found its niche in roleplaying games with well-written narratives and deeply detailed characters. The studio was lauded for developing rich arcs for “companion” characters with varied sexualities, some of whom the player could romance. Its queer representation earned the studio a devoted fanbase.
It’s worth noting that BioWare was shuttered shortly after EA closed a deal in August to be acquired by a business consortium that includes Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Saudi Arabia has criminalized homosexuality and transgender expression, imprisoning people and reportedly sentencing them to punishments including fines, flogging and death. The oil-rich country has also invested heavily in real-world sports, including boxing, golf and soccer, and EA’s blog post mentions “deepening” its core of sports games, which include the annual EA Sports FC and Madden NFL games.
“We believe we can use our experience building interactive entertainment, together with our relationships in sports, to create entirely new ways for fans to engage with the teams, athletes and sports they love,” the company said. “These will be disciplined investments that only scale when they demonstrate real potential.”
The business consortium that acquired EA for $55 billion also included the equity company Silver Lake and investment firm Affinity Partners, which is headed by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump.
BioWare’s rocky recent years amid a changing industry
As the news went out, BioWare fans took to social media to remember the studio’s formative games, but few of its recent ones.
Backlash over the controversial ending of 2012’s Mass Effect 3 led the studio to develop a new trajectory for the series with Mass Effect: Andromeda in 2017, which got a lukewarm reception from fans. While Dragon Age: Inquisition was a hit in 2014, its sequel was reportedly mired in development difficulties and was reworked into the 2024 title Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which met with favorable reviews but a poor reception from fans, and fell short of EA’s sales expectations, IGN reported. Between those, the studio’s attempt at an action-adventure live-service game, 2019’s Anthem, launched in a flawed state, and its road to recovery of updates was cut short in 2021 when the studio stopped development.
BioWare’s last decade saw departures of people who had headlined the games that fans grew up playing, and the more recent missteps led to a cooling of the studio’s beloved reputation. But plenty of things changed in the larger games industry over that span, too, with development time extending from a few years to five or even longer, increasing the costs of making every game. That puts more pressure on new games to be big hits, selling millions of copies to float ever-longer development cycles. When they don’t, it has increasingly led to studio closures.
EA’s blog post announcing the BioWare departure reflects this new era of gaming, and perhaps changing tastes. It’s no surprise to hear the publisher is refocusing on “core areas” and thinning out existing teams, as any business does during an industry contraction. These seem to be shooters like Battlefield 6, action-adventure games like the upcoming Marvel’s Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game (presumably referring to Respawn’s sequel to Jedi Survivor), EA’s sports franchises, The Sims and its skateboarding series, Skate. BioWare’s closure is nestled between those updates, and notably absent is any mention of other RPGs.
But amid recent years of gaming layoffs and shuttered studios, it’s hard to see BioWare’s closure as anything but a swan song for an era of gaming long passed on a new road paved by more laid-off developers and headed toward uncertainty. It’s not as much of a surprise, as analysts confided their worries about the future of EA-owned franchises to Polygon when the business consortium first announced its intent to acquire in September 2025.
There’s a dim hope that private ownership will liberate EA from shareholder pressure to try new risky gaming ideas, but the loss of BioWare is deeply felt among gamers who grew up playing risks that paid off for a time — and ensconced stories and characters in their hearts.
