EA Shutters BioWare, Cancels Mass Effect After $55B Buyout
By Daniel Rao · October 22, 2026 On November 7, 2025 — N7 Day, the one day of the year Mass Effect fans actually circle on the calendar — the series' executive producer Mike Gamble sat down to write a blog post. The next Mass Effect, he promised, was in development, the team was "heads-down and focused exclusively" on it, and there was, he wrote, "a lot of universe to cover, lots of features to build, and lots of romances to figure out." Eleven months later, the romances are cancelled, the universe is closed, and so is the studio. On Wednesday, October 21, Electronic Arts shuttered BioWare — the 31-year-old Edmonton outfit that practically invented the modern story-driven role-playing game — killed the next Mass Effect outright, and eliminated roughly 400 jobs. The timing is the story: on August 4, a Saudi-led consortium closed its $55 billion take-private of EA, loading the publisher with somewhere around $18–20 billion in debt. EA has not said the buyout c...