EA Reportedly Closed BioWare to Focus on Another 'Star Wars' Game

Just over a week ago, Electronic Arts confirmed the closure of BioWare, the studio responsible for franchises such as Dragon Age, Mass Effect and the early days of Baldur's Gate. 

At the time, an official statement justified that the company was shifting its focus to "larger opportunities" and letting go of the development of Mass Effect 5 as part of changes related to the recent buyout by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners by $55 billion. 

Now, a Bloomberg report states that the decision was also pushed forward after a Disney-related project emerged. According to Jason Schreier, the "main factor" that resulted in BioWare's termination was an "opportunity with Walt Disney Co.’s Lucasfilm to develop a third Star Wars Battlefront game". 

With both Star Wars Battlefront III and Mass Effect 5 being expected to cost EA millions of dollars, the company chose to remain working on the former. Even though the fifth game of their famous RPG franchise was already late in development, the publisher believes that a Star Wars project is a less risky investment and a more certain decision due to the company's current financial pressure. 

"While this is never easy, we ultimately have to make tough decisions to focus our teams on the biggest opportunities for our future, including investing in new projects across our portfolio", said a spokesperson to the report. 

Other studios were also affected by recent changes: EA confirmed it the cut 3% of its global workforce. Some laid-off employees told Vertical Slice they were informed in virtual meetings without the opportunity to ask questions or say goodbye to colleagues. "It's very impersonal. You're getting laid off because you're just numbers on a list," a source stated.

Full Circle, responsible for skate., reportedly lost between 30% and 40% of a team of over one hundred people. Workers are questioning the discrepancy between the company's discourse about the long-term potential of the franchise and the reduction in the team responsible for the game. As a worker stated, the general perception is that the publisher is now a "cold dead place that's slowly decaying as leadership pilfers every last cent, leaving the rest of us to worry about how we feed our families."