Electronic Arts May Sell BioWare and Other Studios As They Got New Owners from Saudi Arabia

Electronic Arts officially became a privately owned company this week, with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners now its new owners. Despite the enthusiasm from studio leadership, plenty of employees are expected to face layoffs in the near future, and a new report suggests EA might even sell off some of its gaming studios entirely.

On his Bluesky account, Insider Gaming's Mike Straw revealed there will be mass layoffs at Electronic Arts over the next 6–12 months and that the company is even considering shutting down and/or selling off entire studios, IP rights included. Straw didn't specify which divisions are affected, but BioWare, the studio behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age, is cited as one of the top candidates, as you can check out in his comments below:

I believe that you wrote EA considered selling BioWare, do you think they’ll revisit that?

100%. They are going to looking at several ways to cut hundreds of millions per year.

It is also worth noting that EA had already considered selling BioWare last October following Dragon Age: The Veilguard's disappointing performance, but those talks led to nothing. Given the current situation, it seems more than likely the studio could go independent in the coming years, and it would be a shame if that ultimately led to it shutting down instead. The studio is reportedly still working on Mass Effect 5, announced back in 2020, though what stage that project's actually at remains unclear.

Speaking of Dragon Age, BioWare veteran Mark Darrah claimed in a recent interview that a new franchise entry in the coming years seems pretty unlikely —not just because of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s failure, but also due to a lack of people left to drive the project forward. The same goes for remakes of older games. According to Darrah, there are barely any specialists left at BioWare who know how to work with the Aurora engine, which is a real problem, since porting games to a new engine takes a huge amount of time and resources—something EA doesn't seem ready to commit to right now.