EA Closes BioWare After Three Decades, Cancels the Next Mass Effect

Electronic Arts is closing BioWare, the Edmonton studio behind Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and has stopped work on the next Mass Effect game. EA confirmed the closure in a staff memo published on October 21, 2026, as part of a wider shakeup that cuts around 400 jobs, according to Bloomberg.

What EA announced

The memo comes from David Tinson, EA president and chief operating officer, and Cam Weber, president and chief studios officer. It says a small BioWare team had been in early development on a new Mass Effect, that EA decided not to take the project further, and that the studio and its Edmonton office will therefore close. The executives call BioWare a legendary studio that helped shape the RPG genre.

EA gave no headcount. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier says about 400 roles are affected, roughly 3 percent of the workforce, including about 50 at BioWare. EA says it will help affected staff look for other roles inside the company and will discuss its plans at a Global Town Hall in November. The cuts come less than three months after PIF, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners completed their takeover of EA on August 4.

BioWare’s farewell and the end of the next Mass Effect

In a statement on X, BioWare looked back on more than 30 years of games, from Baldur’s Gate to Mass Effect and Anthem, confirmed that it is closing and that early work on the next Mass Effect is over, and thanked its players. Founded in 1995 and owned by EA since 2007, the studio had struggled lately, and EA trimmed it in 2025 after Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed sales expectations.

The canceled game is the one BioWare teased at The Game Awards in December 2020, often called Mass Effect 5 by fans. That leaves Mass Effect: Andromeda from 2017 as the last new entry, plus the 2021 Legendary Edition remaster of the trilogy. EA has not said what comes next for the series. IGN reports, citing Prime Video sources, that Amazon’s Mass Effect TV series is still in development, while EA told The Verge it had nothing to share.

Watch the official teaser for the canceled game below.

VideoWatch directly inside the article

EA’s roadmap from the same memo

• Shooters: after a successful Battlefield 6, more Battlefield games are planned, Respawn and DICE will team up on an unannounced project, and Apex Legends gets new multiplayer modes.
• Action adventure: Marvel’s Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game remain in the works.
• EA SPORTS: Project Gridiron, a new social first, open world American football experience, is in development, and a new Fight Night is in preproduction.
• The Sims: Project Evergreen is now the priority, and Project Lotus is paused.
• skate.: the studio moves to a smaller, more focused team with a clear community roadmap.

Industry reaction

Tributes came in quickly. CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski wrote on X that BioWare was a big part of his company’s history, recalling how it lent its engine for the first Witcher and shared its E3 booth with the team, as PC Gamer reports. He called it a sad day for the people affected and for the industry.

Based on EA’s official memo “Building EA’s Next Chapter”, EA’s August 4 acquisition announcement and BioWare’s official statement on X, with reporting by Bloomberg, The Verge, IGN and PC Gamer.

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