Major failures like Anthem and Dragon Age: The Veilguard led to the studio’s demise.
Mass Effect. Baldur’s Gate. Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. Dragon Age. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. These are the names of games and series that were all made by the legendary BioWare once upon a time. There was a period where BioWare was one of the hottest studios on the planet, churning out hits both commercially and with fans like it was as easy as breathing. Then things changed.
It started in 2017 with Mass Effect: Andromeda, which saw the studio pivot from natural, organic storytelling to a greater focus on identity politics and social messaging. The game would go on to fall short of EA’s sales prognostications. Next came the multiplayer title Anthem in 2019. Estimated to have been developed for somewhere around $150-$200 million, the game was plagued with problems, including mismanagement, weak progression and story, and more. Like Andromeda, Anthem didn’t hit the sales milestones EA wanted. The biggest and most recent failure, however, came with the 2024 release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Veilguard was an unmitigated disaster. While critics largely swooned over Veilguard’s themes and narrative, the average player was not thrilled to have modern politicking inserted into a dark fantasy game. Lectures about preferred pronouns, sanitized narrative elements, and other changes were all seen as completely out of place in a game about fighting dragons in a medieval fantasy world. The failure of Veilguard was so severe that BioWare was massively downsized. While the studio alleged to be working on the next Mass Effect game, many wondered when word would come that EA was finally going to close the studio down outright.
That day is today. BioWare is no more. The company made the announcement via its official X account:
https://t.co/TicSujMWps
— BioWare (@bioware) October 21, 2026
It’s not much of a surprise to those who have been watching the studio over the past several years. It’s incredibly sad news. So many wonderful games and memories came from BioWare over the decades. Mass Effect was one of the biggest series among my friend group back when the first trilogy was in production; I playtested Mass Effect 3 and they lost their minds over me being able to see the game before it launched. Now, it’s a studio that is a shadow of its former self, largely bereft of many of the people who made it what it was in its heyday. People like co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, Mass Effect creator Casey Hudson, lead writer Drew Karpyshyn, Dragon Age writer David Gaider, and others all left quite the void in their wake as they moved on to other things as time went by.
Unfortunately, those left to carry on the legacy of BioWare weren’t quite able to, and now around 50 people are looking for a new studio to call home. It’s just the latest in the never ending cycle of layoffs that has been plaguing the Western video game industry for the past couple of years. Hopefully everyone impacted manages to land on their feet.
Source: BioWare X Account