BioWare Becomes First Major Casualty Of Saudi Arabia’s EA Takeover

When news came out that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund had taken a majority stake in Electronic Arts last September, it was clear to anyone familiar with Saudi Arabia, EA, private equity, or capitalism that the move would make an already terrible gaming company even worse. I wrote as much at the time, and though the sale took until August of this year to go through, I can grimly say that I was completely right: On Wednesday, Bloomberg video game reporter Jason Schreier reported that EA had shut down BioWare, the game studio behind such classic role-playing game series as Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age.

The studio then confirmed the news in a statement.

According to Schreier, EA CEO David Tinson and Chief Studios Officer (whatever that means) Cam Weber wrote a letter to EA staff announcing the decision, which also includes the cutting of around 400 jobs at EA. In it, the executives call Wednesday's shuttering and layoff part of making "deliberate choices to align talent and investments where we see the greatest opportunities for players and long-term growth."

The seeds of BioWare's agonizing demise were planted in January of 2025, when sales of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the fourth game in the beloved-if-inconsistent RPG series, had fallen short of EA's internal projections. That led to layoffs at the Canadian studio, leaving BioWare with roughly 50 employees (down from a peak of over 400, and a more recent count of 200 during the development of Veilguard) by the time of Wednesday's closing. Still, there seemed to be some hope on the horizon for BioWare: In 2020, the studio had teased a fifth game in the Mass Effect series, and a drip feed of further teases kept hope alive in the years that followed. As of Wednesday morning, there was no reason to believe that the new Mass Effect wasn't moving forward at BioWare, but that has now been canceled alongside the shuttering of the studio.

The loss of BioWare is a blow to fans of creative, boundary-pushing, story-driven video games. For a long time, BioWare was synonymous with great RPGs: Both Baldur's Gate and its lauded sequel laid the groundwork for computer RPGs, and Neverwinter Nights followed along that lineage. BioWare then brought the world of old-school RPGs to consoles with 2003's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, widely considered one of the best games of all time. With the advent of Mass Effect (2007) and Dragon Age (2009), the studio moved in stranger, and better, directions. The games also focused on long-term storytelling; both series allowed the player to carry over story decisions from game to game, creating a long narrative that left players invested not just in the game they were playing at the time, but the broader story. Mass Effect in particular evolved from a good game with its first edition to a galaxy-spanning epic across three outings.

It's fair to say that BioWare ran into issues after 2014's Dragon Age: Inquisition, the studio's last truly beloved game. 2017's Mass Effect: Andromeda fell flat with gamers and critics alike. 2019's Anthem was an even worse debacle. Schreier's investigation into what went wrong with Anthem is worth a read, but the pained development process showed in the game, which was BioWare's biggest-ever failure from every angle. Even a solid release for Veilguard didn't do much to help BioWare regain its foothold as one of the greatest and most reliable studios in video games. The game was fun, well-received, and sold well enough for an RPG, but not for EA's demanding projections.

And so here we are. BioWare died on Wednesday, but the Saudi-owned EA can only claim the last nail in the coffin. This was always going to happen because BioWare had been mismanaged and under-supported for so long that it barely resembled the BioWare that was once so important to so many gamers. It's a huge loss, and the kind the video game industry now seems designed to produce.