EA Shuts Down BioWare, Cancels ‘Mass Effect’ Game After $55 Billion Saudi-Led Takeover

Electronic Arts (EA) is cutting approximately 400 jobs and shutting down BioWare, the legendary studio behind Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. EA has also canceled the next game in its hugely popular Mass Effect franchise.

The announcement comes less than three months after EA’s $55 billion takeover by a consortium comprising Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, the investment firm run by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. A publisher already notorious for closing studios now operates under Saudi-led ownership following a debt-heavy buyout.

“BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we do not take this decision lightly,” EA chief studios officer Cam Weber and chief operating officer David Tinson wrote to employees. Their plan calls for concentrating resources on fewer large-scale projects.

Founded in 1995 and acquired by EA in 2007, BioWare helped set expectations for heavily narrative, character-driven games. Its seemingly limitless worlds invited players to form relationships, make consequential choices, and carry those decisions across sprawling, often non-linear stories. Its influence extends far beyond the franchises EA now controls.

“What generations of BioWare built together is something to celebrate and remember,” the studio said in its farewell statement.

EA’s history gives that farewell an especially bitter familiarity. Over time, EA acquired Bullfrog, Westwood, Origin, Pandemic, and Mythic Entertainment, then closed them all. These studios helped shape entire genres, not just launch popular franchises.

While it’s easy to see the recent EA acquisition as the straw that broke the camel’s back, BioWare fans could see that the legendary studio’s decline was already well underway before the takeover. Anthem was a major failure, Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed EA’s expectations, and successive cuts had reduced the studio to approximately 50 people.

But the current financial context has also dramatically changed things at EA. The buyout left the mega-studio with approximately $18 billion in debt and roughly $1.8 billion in annual interest payments. EA had told debt investors it would pursue $700 million in yearly cost reductions. This is a familiar refrain in 2026, a year defined by historic mergers, layoffs, shutdowns, and all sorts of industry upheaval.

For those who have long turned to BioWare for entertainment and escapism, its games will remain available, and its franchises may eventually return in some form. There is already speculation that EA could shop some of the studio’s biggest properties to other developers as it concentrates on sports and shooters. But the institution that created those worlds is being dismantled, and the artists who brought them to life are being scattered across an increasingly volatile industry.