EA Closes BioWare and Cuts About 400 Jobs as It Narrows Its Portfolio
Electronic Arts said on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, that it is closing BioWare, the studio behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and cutting roughly 400 jobs across the company. Engadget reported that the closure is total, covering the studio's office in Edmonton, Alberta, and that EA has cancelled the early-stage next Mass Effect project.
Variety put the layoffs at about three percent of EA's workforce, and GamesBeat also reported the cut at 400 jobs. The decision came in a memo from co-presidents Cam Weber and David Tinson, who described BioWare as a "legendary studio" and said the decision had not been taken lightly.
The BioWare closure is not the only restructuring in the announcement. EA is reducing headcount at Full Circle, the developer of Skate, and moving it to a smaller, more focused team so it can deliver a clear roadmap for the game. Skate has been in early access since September 2025. EA laid off an undisclosed number of Full Circle staff in February 2026, saying it needed to reshape the studio to better support the free-to-play Skate.
At Maxis, the developer of The Sims, EA is pausing development of Project Lotus to fund another initiative, Project Evergreen. Variety's sources say Respawn and Dice are collaborating on a new shooter, which they identify as Star Wars: Battlefront 3. EA also plans to bring back the Fight Night series, and its EA Sports American football team is building a brand-new social-first open-world experience. On action-adventure, EA said it will concentrate on fewer large-scale projects running at the same time, and it named Marvel's Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game in that context.
The ownership change matters here. EA agreed on September 29, 2025, to be acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners for $55 billion. The company has since gone private, meaning its shares no longer trade on a public stock exchange. According to Engadget, its new owners saddled it with about $20 billion of debt.
In my view, debt of that scale changes the arithmetic for any publisher. A studio that misses its revenue targets becomes harder to carry, and the portfolio decisions announced this week fit that pressure, even though the announcement itself does not frame them that way.
The cuts follow a pattern. In February 2024, EA announced a 5% workforce reduction alongside a reduction in real estate. In January 2025, Bloomberg reported that Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed EA's sales expectations by 50%, which led to cuts at BioWare. In April 2025, Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported that EA eliminated about 300 to 400 positions, including around 100 at Respawn Entertainment, and cancelled a Titanfall game, as Reuters carried. Anthem was shut down earlier in 2026.
For engineers and producers at the affected studios, the consequences are immediate. Live-service games, which rely on a steady stream of new content and online play, need a team that can ship updates on schedule. The Skate restructuring points to a free-to-play model run by a leaner team. Single-player games with large budgets, the kind BioWare built Mass Effect and Dragon Age around, now face a harder approval path inside a portfolio that EA says it wants to narrow.
The broader context here is a publisher trying to reconcile big-franchise ambitions with a cost base and debt load that leave less room for experiments. The loss of a studio with BioWare's history is concrete for the people who worked there. The plans EA has described are still plans until they ship. Fight Night, a Star Wars shooter, and a social-first open-world football project are announced intentions, not finished products. What the announcement does establish is a narrower, more concentrated EA. Whether that focus produces better games or simply fewer of them will show up in release schedules over the next few years.
