On October 21, 2026, Electronic Arts, now majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, closed BioWare and cut roughly 400 jobs, a move that also cancels the studio’s in-progress Mass Effect entry. EA executives framed the decision as aligning talent and investments with long-term growth opportunities, but the shutdown follows a year and a half of decline: sales of Dragon Age: The Veilguard fell short of internal projections in January 2025, triggering rounds of layoffs that shrank the studio from hundreds of employees to roughly fifty by the time of closure.
The shutdown is presented as the culmination of chronic mismanagement rather than a single failure. BioWare’s history of influential, story-driven RPGs - Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age - is contrasted with post-2014 struggles, including the critically panned Mass Effect: Andromeda and the disastrous Anthem, which exposed fractured development. Even a relatively well-received Veilguard wasn’t enough to meet EA’s commercial expectations. The argument is that the Saudi-owned EA delivered the final blow, but the studio’s ruination was years in the making, marking a significant loss for narrative-focused game development.
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