BioWare made Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and on Wednesday Electronic Arts said it is closing the studio. Early development on the next Mass Effect game ends with it.
EA announced the decision on October 21, 2026, in a note on its site signed by Cam and David. A small team at BioWare had been working on early development for Mass Effect, the note says. EA chose “not to move forward with this development,” which means closing the studio and its Edmonton workspace. No closing date was given. BioWare’s own post confirmed the news and thanked players for more than 30 years of games.
Every family tree has a house at its root, and BioWare’s stands in Edmonton. Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip founded the studio there in 1995. Baldur’s Gate followed in 1998 and Knights of the Old Republic in 2003. EA bought BioWare in 2007, the year the first Mass Effect came out, and Dragon Age: Origins arrived two years later. Those two series became the two wings of the house, and most players met the studio through one wing or the other.
The heir BioWare announced in 2020
BioWare announced a new Mass Effect on November 7, 2020, the same day it revealed Mass Effect Legendary Edition. A teaser followed at The Game Awards that December. That is the heir EA has now set aside. GamesFinity covered the previous Mass Effect sequel in 2012, when the open question was its engine. That game shipped as Mass Effect: Andromeda in 2017.
The years since Andromeda were hard on the studio. Anthem launched in 2019. Dragon Age: The Veilguard followed on October 31, 2024, and in January 2025 EA said it had reached 1.5 million players, about half what it expected. BioWare was restructured that month and, by Wikipedia’s count, went from more than 200 people to fewer than 100.
Neither post gives a number of jobs. VGC, citing Bloomberg, reports that EA is cutting about 400 jobs, roughly 3% of its staff, including about 50 at BioWare. EA’s note does not mention Dragon Age at all, and BioWare’s post names it only as part of its history. Neither says what happens to the games already on sale. The same note does say EA is pausing The Sims’ Project Lotus to give Project Evergreen more time, and that it will keep investing heavily in Apex.
A house can close while the family tree stays standing, and I will keep drawing this one. Mass Effect Legendary Edition is still on Steam, with the original trilogy in one place.
