Bloomberg has explained why BioWare closed last week, detailing that EA made the decision based on the emergence of an opportunity to develop a new ambitious Star Wars video game, Battlefront III.
EA announced that it was shutting down the storied studio behind various roleplaying games, including Dragon Age and Mass Effect. There were several reasons for the closure, but the main factor was the recent emergence of an opportunity with Walt Disney Co.’s Lucasfilm to develop a third Star Wars Battlefront game, according to people familiar with the company’s strategy.
Just as the deal popped up, the game publisher was facing new financial pressures thanks to a $55 billion leveraged buyout led by Saudi Arabia’s investment fund that was finalized in August, taking EA private and saddling it with $18 billion in debt.
As they reviewed EA’s portfolio for the next few years, the company’s executives found themselves with two sci-fi action games that were each projected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars: Star Wars Battlefront III and the next Mass Effect title. They chose to invest in Star Wars and shut down BioWare as a result, said the people familiar, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Star Wars Battlefront III has not even begun development yet, but EA executives saw it as a less risky, more predictable bet than a new Mass Effect — and the publisher behind Battlefield has always been more comfortable with shooters than RPGs.
There were certainly other factors behind the shutdown. BioWare’s last few games have not been received well, including 2017’s often-memed Mass Effect: Andromeda and 2019’s disastrous Anthem. The studio’s most recent release, 2024’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard, missed sales expectations by 50%, leading EA to gut BioWare and relocate many of its staff to other units within the organization. Only 50 people were left at BioWare when the studio was closed last week.
Corporate politics may have also played a role in the closure. Over the summer, EA shuffled its executive ranks, promoting EA Sports veterans David Tinson and Cam Weber while sidelining Laura Miele, who ran EA’s studios and was an advocate for BioWare and Mass Effect, according to people familiar with the company’s internal politics.
When asked about BioWare’s closure, an EA spokesperson said in a statement that the company “collectively reached this decision following months of planning, review, and analysis, including careful consideration of evolving business conditions, industry dynamics, and our long-term priorities” but would not offer more specifics.
“While this is never easy, we ultimately have to make tough decisions to focus our teams on the biggest opportunities for our future, including investing in new projects across our portfolio,” the spokesperson added.
EA and BioWare were always an awkward fit. EA, one of the world’s biggest game publishers, primarily focused on fast-paced sports and action games. It was the jock hanging out by the bleachers; BioWare was the nerd playing Dungeons & Dragons in the cafeteria. BioWare’s developers complained that EA didn’t understand how to market and support their RPGs, while EA always seemed to prioritize the predictable revenue of annualized franchises, such as Madden and FIFA.
Read the coverage in full at Bloomberg.com.
