EA Chose Star Wars Battlefront 3 Over Mass Effect — And That’s What Killed BioWare, Report Says

When EA shut down BioWare on October 21, cancelling the next Mass Effect in the process, one question hung over the whole thing: why? Fans filled the silence with theories. Now, a new Bloomberg report says the answer is much simpler — and much colder. EA reportedly chose Star Wars.

According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, reporting in his Game On newsletter on October 30 and based on people familiar with EA’s strategy, the publisher recently received an opportunity from Lucasfilm to make a third Star Wars Battlefront game. As executives reviewed EA’s upcoming portfolio, they found themselves holding two sci-fi action games, each projected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars: Star Wars Battlefront III, and the next Mass Effect. They picked one. It was not Mass Effect.

Previously: BioWare Is DEAD — EA Shuts Down the Mass Effect Studio, Cancels Mass Effect 5, and Cuts 400 Jobs

A game that doesn’t exist yet beat a game in development

The detail that stings the most: Battlefront 3 has not even entered development yet, according to the report. It emerged fairly recently, off the back of renewed interest in Battlefront 2, and would reportedly be built by DICE and Respawn Entertainment. Mass Effect, meanwhile, had a real team — small, but real. Around 50 people remained at BioWare when it closed, all of them working on the game believed to have been titled Mass Effect Universe, the project first teased at The Game Awards back in 2020.

Why was it still only ~50 people after six years? Per Bloomberg’s reporting, the bulk of BioWare spent roughly a year and a half to two years helping finish Dragon Age: The Veilguard, including work on its final mission, which left Mass Effect in early development and years from release. Finishing it would have meant massively expanding the team or bringing in heavy external support — hundreds of millions more dollars, on a timeline nobody could promise. Executives reportedly saw Battlefront as a “less risky, more predictable bet”.

The debt hanging over everything

Context matters here. EA went private in a roughly $55 billion leveraged buyout led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, alongside Silver Lake and Affinity Partners — a deal that closed on August 4 and left the company carrying around $18 billion in debt, with annual interest payments reported at over $1 billion. A publisher servicing that kind of debt needs predictable cash flow, and Schreier’s reporting ties the decision directly to it: a Battlefront 3 that hits its deadlines is, on a spreadsheet, more valuable than a sprawling branching RPG that might slip multiple times.

An executive reshuffle reportedly did not help BioWare’s corner. Laura Miele, described in the reporting as an important advocate for BioWare and Mass Effect inside EA, was sidelined, while David Tinson and Cam Weber gained influence. The closure also came with wider cuts — around 350 additional jobs elsewhere in the company, on top of the roughly 400 total layoffs reported around the October 21 announcement.

Battlefront was the trigger, not the whole story

Bloomberg is clear that Star Wars was the main factor, not the only one. BioWare’s recent track record gave executives their supporting arguments: Mass Effect: Andromeda was poorly received in 2017, Anthem failed as a live-service bet in 2019, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, despite positive reviews, missed EA’s sales expectations by 50%. The studio had already been whittled down through years of layoffs before the final closure. Schreier’s broader conclusion is about the whole industry: budgets have grown far faster than sales, pushing publishers to bet only on their biggest franchises — and Star Wars is bigger than most.

There is a bleak irony in the history, too. EA originally acquired BioWare back in 2007 partly on the strength of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Nineteen years later, Star Wars is reportedly the reason the studio no longer exists.

What is confirmed, and what is reported

To be clear about what is settled and what is not: BioWare’s closure and the cancellation of the next Mass Effect are confirmed — EA announced both on October 21, saying a small team had been working on the game in early development and that it had decided not to move forward. What rests on Bloomberg’s anonymous sources is the explanation — that Battlefront 3 was the deciding factor. EA has not confirmed that link. Its statement to Bloomberg says the decision was collectively reached after months of planning, review and analysis, and talks about focusing teams on the company’s biggest opportunities, without naming either game.

Fans, meanwhile, have not gone quietly — petitions and even paid billboards have popped up under a #SaveMassEffect push since the closure. And one piece of the franchise survives untouched: the Mass Effect TV series is still in the works at Amazon.

None of that changes the outcome. The Normandy lost to the Millennium Falcon — not in a fair fight over quality, but in a portfolio review, against a game that hasn’t started development, in a company carrying $18 billion of new debt. That is where AAA games are in 2026.

Related: BioWare Is DEAD — EA Shuts Down the Mass Effect Studio, Cancels Mass Effect 5, and Cuts 400 Jobs | The Xbox Layoffs Are NOT Over — Three More Rounds Are Coming, and 1,868 People Are Already Gone | Ubisoft Plans to Close RedLynx, the Trials Studio — 122 Jobs Hit Across Two Studios

Sources: Bloomberg (Jason Schreier’s Game On newsletter, October 30, 2026), via Game Informer and Polygon.

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