EA Closes BioWare, Cancels Next Mass Effect Game
Electronic Arts is shutting down BioWare and has officially cancelled the next Mass Effect game. Approximately 50 employees at BioWare will be affected, as part of wider layoffs affecting around 400 EA employees.
The famed studio had been downsizing for years, going from roughly 200 employees in 2023 to fewer than 100 in early 2025. Its last major release, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, launched in 2024 but failed to meet EA’s financial targets. This resulted in a smaller, more focused team working on the next Mass Effect game, which was announced back in 2020 and remained in early development until EA cancelled the project.
EA Letting Go of 400 Employees Across the Company
BioWare’s closure comes as part of a wider restructuring at EA, which is reportedly laying off around 400 employees across the company. Electronic Arts chief operating officer David Tinson and chief studios officer Cam Weber outlined the company’s priorities in a letter to employees, explaining its plans to concentrate resources on its core franchises and fewer large-scale projects.
We believe our best creative work happens when we’re clear about what matters most for our players and give our teams the freedom to move quickly. So, we’re concentrating our teams, technology, and investment behind these three strategic priorities.
Deepen Our Core: Our greatest opportunity starts with our franchises and global communities that have made EA a leader in interactive entertainment. This is where we’ve had to make our hardest choices. Saying no to some things we're passionate about allows us to focus our teams and resources so we give our biggest opportunities everything they need to succeed.
Expand Our Reach: The strength of our core business creates an enormous opportunity to reach more players across new platforms, markets, and business models. As one example, in regions as dynamic as Asia, success means building experiences that reflect local players, cultures, and expectations.
Transform Our Business: 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. These will be disciplined investments that only scale when they demonstrate real potential.
These priorities will bring clarity and focus to your work every day, and so will the way we work. We’ve spent time listening to teams about what’s working, what’s getting in the way, and what you need to do your best work. The feedback was consistent: you want clearer priorities, faster decisions, and teams that work more closely together. We’ve already begun simplifying how we work so we can spend more time creating and innovating for our players.
The company is said to focus their resources in titles such as Apex Legends, the Star Wars franchise, Battlefield, and other titles. Marvel’s Iron Man is said to have not been affected and is continuing as planned.
This restructuring comes less than three months after EA went private following a $55 billion buyout by a consortium comprising Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners.
BioWare was founded in 1995 and acquired by EA in 2007. The studio enjoyed considerable success with the original Mass Effect trilogy and its first three Dragon Age games. However, it struggled to replicate that success with more recent releases. Its live-service looter shooter Anthem failed to establish a lasting player base, Mass Effect: Andromeda failed to capture the same excitement as the original trilogy, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard fell short of EA’s financial expectations.
About the Author - Carlos Hernandez
Carlos Hernandez is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Too Much Gaming, where he writes about video games, reviews, and industry news. A lifelong gamer, he would do anything to experience Final Fantasy Tactics for the first time again and has a love/hate relationship with games that require hunting for new gear to improve your character.
Ghost of Yotei: Complete Edition bundles the base game with Echoes of Sekigahara, Most Wanted, and Legends co-op. While the main campaign drags, Most Wanted delivers an excellent roguelite combat experience, especially with Jin Sakai.