Electronic Arts is cutting roughly 400 jobs and shutting down BioWare after 31 years, a leaked internal memo confirmed Wednesday.
Cam Weber, 51, president and chief studios officer, and David Tinson, president and COO, signed the memo that surfaced publicly this week. The Redwood City, California-based publisher is eliminating about 3 percent of its global workforce as part of a sweeping business restructure, according to figures reported.
“We’ve challenged assumptions, confronted hard realities, imagined new possibilities, and made deliberate choices in order to deliver exceptional experiences for our players and to drive sustained growth,” Weber and Tinson wrote in the memo.
“Over the past several months, we’ve taken a hard look at our business, how we operate, and what it will take to lead in this next era of interactive entertainment,” they added.
The closure of BioWare marks the end of one of gaming’s most storied development houses. Founded in 1995, the Edmonton, Alberta-based studio spent three decades building franchises that defined role-playing games for millions of players worldwide.
BioWare’s portfolio includes the “Mass Effect” science fiction trilogy and its 2017 sequel “Mass Effect: Andromeda,” along with the fantasy “Dragon Age” series. The studio had most recently been developing “Dragon Age: The Veilguard,” which released in October 2024 to mixed commercial performance.
The layoffs land amid a brutal contraction across the video game industry that has seen thousands of developers lose positions since 2023. Major publishers have cited rising development costs, longer production cycles, and post-pandemic market correction as pressures forcing workforce reductions.
Electronic Arts, founded in 1982, ranks among the largest publicly traded gaming companies in the world. The publisher operates numerous studios beyond BioWare, including EA Sports, DICE, and Respawn Entertainment, and holds lucrative licensing agreements for annual sports franchises including “Madden NFL” and “FIFA.”
The memo’s leak Wednesday transformed what might have remained internal communication into public confirmation of one of the most significant studio closures in recent industry history. Electronic Arts had not publicly announced the BioWare shutdown prior to the document surfacing.
The “Mass Effect” franchise alone spawned four mainline entries, multiple spinoffs, novels, and a planned television adaptation. “Dragon Age” had reached its fourth major installment with “The Veilguard,” though reports of underwhelming sales had circulated in the months following its fall release.
What happens to BioWare’s in-development projects and remaining staff remains unaddressed in the leaked correspondence. The studio’s Edmonton headquarters had employed hundreds of developers at its peak.