BioWare is closing its doors and the next Mass Effect game is canceled, EA announced.
Bloomberg said BioWare is closing due to massive layoffs at Electronic Arts, which amount to 400 people losing their jobs (about 3% of total staff). About 50 of those positions were at BioWare.
After the best-selling Dragon Age: Inquisition franchise, BioWare sought direct-to-video success with Anthem, then spent the better part of a decade on the troubled Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Both underperformed. Mass Effect, for its part, enjoyed mixed success. Mass Effect Andromeda is widely considered a disappointment among fans, although the most recent remaster of the Legendary Edition series was well received.
BioWare had spent the last half-decade gradually teasing the setting and story of the next Mass Effect. We had confirmation that Mass Effect 5 would take place hundreds of years after Mass Effect 3 and would feature a narrative that refocuses the action on the franchise’s original Milky Way setting, long after the Reapers’ defeat. Now fans will never know what happens next.
It’s unclear what this means for Amazon’s live-action Mass Effect series, which was also supposed to take place after the events of Mass Effect 3 and tell a new story. Earlier this year, Daniel Casey, co-showrunner of the Mass Effect TV series, refuted a report suggesting the upcoming adaptation had recently been rewritten to be “more appealing to non-gamers.”
EA will continue with sports games, Respawn’s Apex Legends, action-adventure games (Star Wars: Jedi 3 and Marvel’s Iron Man) and Battlefield. Bloomberg said that Respawn and DICE were likely working on Star Wars: Battlefront 3, as had been rumored.
The drastic cuts come just months after EA was taken private in a $55 billion leveraged buyout, backed largely by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, as well as U.S. private equity firm Silver Lake and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners.
In a memo sent to staff today, Cam Weber, president and chief studio officer, and David Tinson, president and chief operating officer, described themselves as “the number one publisher of Western HD games, but ‘our industry is evolving rapidly.’
“Gamers have more choices than ever in terms of their time and attention, competition is intensifying, and some of our biggest growth opportunities extend beyond the markets, platforms, and business models where EA has traditionally been strongest,” they said.
EA responded by “focusing our teams, our technology and our investments” behind three strategic priorities: “deepening our core business; “expand our reach”; and “transform our business”.
“Our greatest opportunity begins with our global franchises and communities that have made EA a leader in interactive entertainment,” the two partners continued. “This is where we’ve had to make our toughest choices. Saying no to some of the things we’re passionate about allows us to focus our teams and resources to give our biggest opportunities everything they need to succeed.”
Last year’s Battlefield 6 was a “great success.” Future Battlefield games are on the way, as well as the Respawn and DICE collaboration project that would be Star Wars: Battlefront 3. EA said it would also continue to “invest heavily” in Respawn’s battle royale, Apex Legends, over the coming years by introducing all-new multiplayer game modes and “other new experiences, to expand the universe.”
Marvel’s Iron Man (EA Motive) and the upcoming Star Wars Jedi 3 (Respawn) endure, but expect “fewer large-scale concurrent projects” in EA’s action-adventure genre. And here is the official blurb at the end of BioWare and Mass Effect:
As we focus on these larger opportunities, we have a small team at BioWare working on early development of Mass Effect. We have made the decision not to move forward with this development, which means we are closing the studio and our Edmonton workspace. BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we don’t take this decision lightly.
EA Sports will of course continue the FC franchise. Two new projects are in development and expected to be revealed in the coming months: “an all-new open-world social experience for our American football team that we’re calling ‘Project Gridiron,’ and we’re also in pre-production to bring back a beloved and fan-favorite game in Fight Night, leveraging the capabilities of our simulation fighting team.”
The “Lifestyle” category, as EA calls it, will see Project Evergreen continue but Project Lotus will be suspended. Both are The Sims projects. Skate, meanwhile, has been “very successful in attracting players to the game, and we need to create an experience that keeps them engaged for the long term.” To do this, we are making changes at the studio to have a more focused and smaller team to implement a very clear roadmap for our community that we believe will build a healthier, more sustainable business.
Less than 12 months ago, BioWare’s Mass Effect executive producer Mike Gamble celebrated N7 Day to declare that the next Mass Effect game was still in development, to express his enthusiasm for the Amazon TV series, and to insist that EA and BioWare “remain committed to telling more stories in this universe.”
In a social media post today, Gamble told his fans, “Your support has meant everything to me over the last 17 years at BioWare.”
Wesley is the editor-in-chief of IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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