Electronic Arts shutting Down BioWare, Laying off 400 Employees - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 11 hours ago / 1,830 Views
Electronic Arts is shutting down Dragon Age and Mass Effect developer BioWare and is laying off 400 employees, according to Bloomberg.
EA Chief Operating Officer David Tinson and Chief Studios Officer Cam Weber in a letter sent to staff Wednesday obtained by Bloomberg said that "over the past several months, we’ve taken a hard look at our business" and will be ending production on some projects, including the next Mass Effect game.
EA will continue to invest in sports games, the Battlefield franchise, Apex Legends, the next Star Wars Jedi title and a new game Iron Man game. Respawn and DICE will collaborate on a new project.
"Across our portfolio, we’re making deliberate choices to align talent and investments where we see the greatest opportunities for players and long-term growth," wrote the executives.
The letter also states EA is cancelling a game in The Sims franchise codenamed Project Lotus and instead will focus on a different project, codenamed Project Evergreen. Development on Skate will continue, but the studio will be downsized.
Electronic Arts was acquired in August for $55 billion by venture capitalists led by Saudi Arabia's investment fund. The company went private and about $18 billion in debt was put in its books. EA earlier this year said it plans to cut spending by up to $700 million as a way to save money.
BioWare has posted on social media confirming it is shutting down:
For more than 30 years, BioWare has been more than a studio. It has been a home for storytellers, developers, and the players who brought our worlds to life.
Baldur's Gate. Neverwinter Nights. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Dragon Age. Mass Effect. Anthem.
Now, after more than three decades of shared adventures, BioWare is closing and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending.
There is nothing easy about writing those words. Our focus right now is on our incredibly talented team who put their hearts into these games, and supporting one another through this transition.
What generations of BioWare built together is something to celebrate and remember. These games became so much more because you played them, debated your choices, fell in love with the characters, and made these worlds your own.
From all of us at BioWare, thank you for being the most meaningful part of our story.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Guess that Dragon veil game didnt do as well as they thought.
"Go woke, go bro.... - err, top the charts" - Jason Schreier. Plus all the trans activist reviewers, and allies that pushed it's meta critic score up artificially because they like political messaging in games. Bad games just don't sell, regardless of how much people try to push "modern audience" stuff.
Yeah, it definitely didn't sell that well, EA revealed in their investor earnings call for the Holiday quarter (which had 2 months of sales for Veilguard ), that the game had got just over1.5m players between sales and the EA Play Pro subscription tier in those 2 months, EA had been expecting 3m players in the Holiday quarter.
Before EA had actually revealed how it performed, we had journalists reporting that it was the biggest Dragon Age release on Steam and one of EA's biggest releases on Steam, and that these were positive signs that the game was selling well on Xbox and PS as well. That simply wasn't the case, 1.5m players, including the sub service, isn't great.
Hopefully veterans will come together to create a better Bioware game than EA ever could.
that would be idea
Vile, absolutely vile. I know they have not made a banger for a while, but studio closures (especially ones steeped in history) are one reason I barely play modern games. The present industry is just full of arseholes, but people keep buying, so the bullshit keeps continuing.
Newsflash: most businesses that fail continuously for twelve years have a habit of going under.
When's Xbox's turn?
Soon, very soon. Probably about 2 years after Helix launches
It saddens me because they were an all-time favourite developer at one point, but I admit nothing released under the BioWare name has reached me in quite a while now.
Dragon Age: Inquisition was back in 2014.... I checked. That was the last time they had a hit.
If you go 12 years not making a profit.... you get shut down. I loved the old Bioware too, but they are gone or too far changed from their hay day (mindset).
Thanks for nothing, EA.
At least we got that remaster before this happened...
Would have been nice to get a PS5/XSX version of it though
The remastered trilogy does run with improved resolution and framerates on the Series X, at least.
Very sad to see with the history Bioware has, but Bioware had been in decline even since EA bought it and under EA this was always almost inevitable, as once buying the studio they tend to strip away what made it successful in the first place.
I don’t think there was a single Bioware EA game that was either well received or a general success.
Don't agree, DA2, while isn't a good as the first was still a great game with an excellent story, Mass Effect 3 was also great and finishes the story well and oddly fun multiplayer. Inquisition is one of my favourite games ever.
EA then kinda stepped in and really ruined things.
I haven’t played Dragon Age series, I just recall DA2 being seen as disappointing even if it was good overall and was seen as a step down from DA:O.
Mass Effect 3 was good but does not finishes the story well, the ending being the weakest point by far.
This is my point - that it was downhill. DA2 and ME3 may have been good, but were step-downs from DA:O and ME2, and Bioware continued to go downhill from there.
Yes, Dragon Age: Inquisition also won Game of the Year in 2014
FWIW DA:Inquisition is the most infamous GotY win, especially when the game launched directly before the awards show. That year really should've gone to Bayo2 or DKC:Tropical Freeze.
Ironically, this is a case where EA are largely innocent. Sure, they didn't give them enough time to finish Mass Effect 3, and made a few greedy decisions when forcing them to split planned content for ME3 and DA:I off into DLC, but everything else is purely Bioware's own fault. And no, the whole forced use of Frostbite doesn't count; if EA Sports can use it to produce a soccer game, Bioware have no excuse other than their own incompetence for repeatedly getting such bad results out of it.
New video discussing this depressing news is live - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLqkbpTf_7E
Dragon Age Veilguard actually killed them. That and EA apparently didn't like the direction Mass Effect was taking. I think there is a learning experiance in all this though. Don't hoodwink your fan base, don't push old fans asides for trying for a new "modern audience". That was without a doubt, a huge part in all this.
Thank you for the memories BioWare!
Of course they are, new owners are going to strip EA for parts and reduce costs to take as much money out of it as possible. 10 years and they'll sell it for nothing but debt while walking away with billions.
FIFA is about as corrupt as boxing. So is pro golf( though at least the Saudi/Trump-owned LIV is failing.
Hopefully the NFL will shop around for new partnerships. John Madden died years ago, we can probably lay Madden football to rest at this point.
Would be nice for an NFL 2K return
Madden is the brand now so very unlikely that its going anywhere. I don’t think the PGA Tour games did as well without the Tiger Woods branding, and the inly reason EA ditched the Fifa brand is because Fifa wanted way too much money in license fees.
FIFA are so corrupt, EA left them and just said "Nah, we'll just leave your name behind and continue making our game, thanks."
FIFA hasn't even bothered trying to get anyone else to make a game for them, no one wants to pay their rediculous fees, but guess that's because Infantino was trying to sell off the World Cup instead.
That’s probably going to change. Prince Bonesaw’s got his greedy claws all into soccer. That’s part of why Ronaldo was a character in Fatal Fury. Next year’s soccer game will probably have FIFA branding.
And here I was thinking how cool it would be if they were to port the Mass Effect Trilogy to Switch 2…
Very sad news indeed. Time to crack out the Legendary edition of Mass Effect, and remember them for their highs.
End of an era they made Baldur's Gate 2 which was one of the games that got me into PC and they became specialists in large Sci-fi adventure titles which are even that common even today. KOTOR changed the face of what people expected from such games let alone a Star Wars title.
I suppose this will be devastating to some. Even if Blizzard is a fraction of their former glory it would feel entirely wrong to me to have a world with Blizzard. Personally I just really wanted to see Dragon Age Origins remade, which I suppose is still not impossible, but it's a damn shame they never got a chance to.
So sad. 😭
