The debt EA carried out of a leveraged buyout by the Saudi government and private equity left the publisher looking to cut spending, and that squeeze is why its executives backed Star Wars Battlefront 3 over Mass Effect 5, the decision an October 30, 2026 Bloomberg report names as the main factor in the shutdown of BioWare.
According to Bloomberg, whose postmortem Rock Paper Shotgun summarized, Disney offered EA the opportunity to make Star Wars Battlefront 3 at the very moment the publisher, saddled with buyout debt, wanted to spend less cash. BioWare’s next Mass Effect, an RPG in development that reportedly carried an alternate-timelines design built from players’ earlier choices, lost that internal contest to a licensed shooter.
Destructoid reports that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is now EA’s majority owner, which sharpens the picture: a leveraged buyout loads its cost onto the acquired company, and the cash EA wanted to conserve went toward a Star Wars license rather than its own flagship RPG studio. BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk, who sold the studio to EA in the first place, points to the Saudi acquisition as the real turning point in its decline.
Development on Star Wars Battlefront 3 has not started yet, Bloomberg reports, with Respawn and DICE set to make it. The backing still went to a shooter that slots in beside EA’s sports and gun-game catalog, over the next Mass Effect, which EA cancelled in a restructuring that cut roughly 400 jobs.
An EA spokesperson told Bloomberg the decision to close BioWare was made “following months of planning, review, and analysis, including careful consideration of evolving business conditions, industry dynamics, and our long-term priorities.”
The FIFA precedent
EA has shown this preference for control before. In 2022 the company dropped FIFA as the namesake and licensing partner of its football games, choosing a lesser brand it controls outright over an established name it does not. Bloomberg’s account frames the BioWare closure in the same terms: a safe, predictable Star Wars title read as a surer bet than an ambitious internal RPG.
BioWare, the studio behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age, was shuttered by EA in October 2026. The report describes the Battlefront 3 decision as the main factor in that shutdown, with the studio’s uneven release record since Mass Effect: Andromeda, worsened by Anthem and unarrested by Dragon Age: The Veilguard, also in the mix.
