Publisher Electronic Arts is planning to shut down legendary RPG studio BioWare, laying off about 50 employees at the studio alongside 350 more elsewhere.
In a new Bloomberg report, a person familiar with the matter said a total of 3% of EA's overall company has been affected by this latest round of layoffs.
According to a staff letter sent out on Wednesday that Bloomberg viewed, EA chief operating officer David Tinson and chief studios officer Cam Weber explained that the company took a "hard look" at its business over the last several months. This resulted in some projects getting canceled, including the next Mass Effect game--which was in early development at BioWare--as well as a planned game in The Sims franchise codenamed Project Lotus. Instead, the resources allocated to that title will be diverted to something else currently codenamed Project Evergreen.
Many of EA's currently released franchises will continue as expected. Full Circle will keep working on Skate, but EA said the team there would be downsized. Meanwhile, its myriad sports games, Apex Legends, Battlefield, the next Star Wars Jedi game, and a new game based on Iron Man will continue to be invested in.
"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," Tinson and Weber wrote in the letter sent out to staff on Wednesday.
This comes one year after EA agreed to a buyout by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund for $55 billion and two months after the company went private following the acquisition. The writing was on the wall, however, as EA told investors in March that it planned to save some $700 million after the massive leveraged buyout saddled the company with billions of dollars in debt.
The studio needs no introduction, but BioWare is quite the storied developer. Founded in February 1995, the Canadian studio is known for its many RPGs from Baldur's Gate and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic to Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Things haven't been too successful for BioWare recently, though, with both 2019's Anthem and 2024's Dragon Age: The Veilguard failing to meet expectations. While Mass Effect 5 has been in development since at least February 2022, that project is dead ... and so is BioWare.