BioWare is shutting down and the next Mass Effect game is canceled, EA has announced. The studio's closure comes amid mass layoffs at Electronic Arts, which amount to 400 people losing their jobs, with roughly 50 of these roles at BioWare. The drastic cuts come just a few months after EA went private in a leveraged buyout worth $55 billion, backed in large part by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, as well as the U.S. private equity firm Silver lake and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners.
EA will continue to focus on sports games, Respawn's Apex Legends, action-adventure games, and Battlefield. The company will also continue to invest heavily in Respawn's battle royale, Apex Legends, and is working on new projects such as Star Wars: Battlefront 3 and Marvel's Iron Man. However, the closure of BioWare means that fans will never find out what happens next in the Mass Effect series, which had spent the past half a decade teasing the next game's setting and story.