BioWare Was Doomed Before EA's $55B Buyout, Analysts Say

EA is carrying roughly $18 billion in acquisition debt at about $1.8 billion a year in interest — more than its estimated $1.5 billion annual EBITDA — and that arithmetic, analysts told IGN, is why BioWare is closed and Mass Effect 5 is cancelled.

On October 21, EA announced a strategy shift and internal restructuring that shuttered BioWare after more than 30 years, cancelled multiple projects, and cut a reported 400 jobs. The studio behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age is gone. A leaked internal trailer for Mass Effect Universe made the loss sting a little more.

Fans hoped EA might sell the franchises rather than let them languish. Analysts doubt anyone's buying.

Who could actually buy Mass Effect?

Industry analyst Joost van Dreunen answered with a flat "maybe," then explained why probably not: the IPs are too costly and too slow for most developers to take on.

"In many ways, BioWare's IP is in the same boat as some of the other studios we recently saw being divested. They are all well-known and too expensive for most buyers. Capable publishers like CD Projekt Red already have their hands full with their own projects," van Dreunen said. CD Projekt Red, for the record, has The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 in active development.

Why did EA cancel a game announced in 2020?

The next Mass Effect was announced at The Game Awards 2020 — six years ago. Last November, then-executive producer Mike Gamble celebrated N7 Day by confirming the game was still in development and said EA and BioWare "remain committed to telling more stories in this universe." He was also enthusiastic about the Amazon TV series, which IGN understands remains in the works.

What changed is ownership. Van Dreunen argues EA's new owners — the PIF and its partners — want sports, live service, and new markets like Asia. Recurring revenue beats prestige.

"Before its buyout, EA had been focusing on building recurring revenue streams, and the focus of its new owners is sports, live service, and new markets like Asia. Even if Mass Effect and Dragon Age were fantastically successful, corporate will insist on predictable cash flow. It makes franchises like Mass Effect a prestige project," he said.

The cuts won't stop at Edmonton, in his view. "Considering the debt load, I'd expect to hear about more layoffs in the months to come. The memo already shrinks the skate. team and pauses a project for The Sims. I expect EA's town hall in November to bring more bad news."

Was the closure predictable?

Van Dreunen and Ampere's Piers Harding-Rolls both think so, calling the closure "entirely predictable and precisely what a leveraged buyout looks like once the deal closes."

EA has told lenders it will cut $700 million in annual costs to service the debt. Against that number, a 50-person team working on a game years from launch is the easiest line to cut — legacy or no legacy.

There's also the commercial record. Ampere data puts Dragon Age: The Veilguard, released at the end of 2024, at an estimated 1.9 million units sold globally across PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam through the end of September — well below internal targets. That follows 2017's Mass Effect: Andromeda and 2019's Anthem, both of which missed EA's expectations.

"Unfortunately, the studio's recent big-budget releases have not performed well enough commercially," Harding-Rolls said. "The changing nature of high-end gaming and the need to cut costs means that it is likely that Bioware's future was under discussion before EA was acquired by the PIF and its partners."

He also acknowledged the cultural weight of the moment: "This news is emotive for many adult gamers because of Bioware's long history of delivering games with deep narratives that connect with audiences, meaning it has a large cultural footprint. It's a name that has been around for 30 years, so seeing it close is a significant moment for the industry. In particular, the original Baldur's Gate games, Neverwinter Nights, and KOTOR were genre defining, and the later Mass Effect titles also strongly resonated with audiences."

What about the West's AAA cost problem?

MST Financial's David Gibson reads the closure as three factors stacked: "EA going private and needing to improve returns and margins to fund large debt, high relative costs in the West (versus Asia, etc.) to develop AAA games, and role playing games like Mass Effect not doing enough sales to be profitable enough."

He noted other in-development games using EA IP were reportedly scrapped too, and offered a half-hopeful scenario: "I would hope a small and nimble studio would acquire some of the IP and make great games that users love and that contain innovation, rather than repeat the same stuff. EA has a history of making a series of games that are just not fun to play or contain innovation."

Former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah is more optimistic about an IP sale than he once was, but only marginally. EA, he cautioned, could just as easily "forget they ever existed and bury them in the vault."

The next signal arrives at EA's November town hall.