THE CRUNCH
BioWare, the studio behind Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, is closing down after more than three decades. In a statement posted on social media, the developer said early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending, and that its focus now is supporting the team through the transition. The closure comes just months after EA was bought out for $55 billion by a group including investment firm Silver Lake, private equity group Affinity Partners, led by Jared Kushner, and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
Layoffs at BioWare had been expected after the acquisition this summer, but a full studio closure this soon comes as a surprise. Eurogamer's retrospective on the studio characterises the decision as EA deciding it had no place for BioWare under its new Saudi and private investment ownership. A Bloomberg report adds that EA is planning to cut roughly 400 jobs across the company, around 3 percent of its workforce. In a letter to staff seen by Bloomberg, CEO David Tinson and CSO Cam Weber said EA is "making deliberate choices to align talent and investments where we see the greatest opportunities for players and long-term growth".
The closure has drawn tributes from across the industry. "BioWare has been a massive part of CDPR history," CD Projekt Red joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski acknowledged on X. Baldur's Gate was the first game CD Projekt Red distributed in its early days, and BioWare later gave CDPR free E3 stand space to show the original Witcher.
The studio had been struggling for some years. Its live-service experiment Anthem fell flat, and its most recent release, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, missed EA's internal sales expectations, prompting an earlier round of layoffs. The next Mass Effect, informally dubbed Mass Effect 5 by fans, had seemingly not been ready to enter full production, though BioWare had previously insisted the project was still in development.