Last week’s shutdown of BioWare, the legendary studio behind Dragon Age and Mass Effect, sent both fans and the industry alike reeling. While there was plenty of speculation as to the reasons behind the studio’s closure, a new report from Bloomberg paints a specific target: Star Wars Battlefront 3.
Bloomberg reports that the “main factor” for BioWare’s closure was the recent emergence of an opportunity to collaborate with Disney’s Lucasfilm on a new Battlefront game. But just as that deal arose, EA was facing massive financial pressure from the $55 million leveraged buyout led by Saudi Arabia.
“As they reviewed EA’s portfolio for the next few years, the company’s executives found themselves with two sci-fi action games that were each projected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars: Star Wars Battlefront III and the next Mass Effect title,” states Bloomberg’s report. “They chose to invest in Star Wars and shut down BioWare as a result, said the people familiar, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to the press.”
It should be noted that Bloomberg states there were other reasons behind the closure, including the lacklustre performance of many of BioWare’s recent games, from Mass Effect: Andromeda to Dragon Age: The Veilguard. In January 2025, EA slashed hundreds of jobs at BioWare, leaving only a small team to work on the next Mass Effect.
The real kicker here, however, is that Star Wars Battlefront 3 hasn’t even started development, while the new Mass Effect, which we now know was titled Mass Effect Universe, was years into development. In 2024, EA also shuttered Ridgeline Games, one of the developers behind the first two Star Wars Battlefront games, and cancelled an unannounced Star Wars shooter from Respawn, the studio behind the Star Wars Jedi games.
The next Mass Effect was first announced with a teaser trailer in 2020. Since the closure of BioWare, a massive amount of details have leaked about the game, including a full internal trailer and that Grammy-award-winning composer Austin Wintory had been in talks to do the soundtrack.
Then, former BioWare technical director Romain Toutain went live on Twitch, where he discussed the gameplay, lore, and story of Mass Effect Universe. The new title was, apparently, supposed to feature a kind of “multiverse” system that would account for all of the choices of previous Mass Effect games. The name “Universe” came from the idea of each save file being its own universe. He also confirmed the bartender in the leaked trailer was a new alien race that would have been introduced.
A fan petition to #SaveMassEffect has been created, currently sitting at just over 280,000 signatures. Fans also bought ad space on a billboard in Times Square, New York, to advertise the petition and hashtag.
Despite the cancellation of Mass Effect Universe, the Amazon Prime TV adaptation still seems to be on track for release.
