Why EA Closed BioWare & Chose Star Wars: Battlefront 3 Over Mass Effect

Reports on why BioWare was shut down have finally surfaced, and some of it is more surprising than you would expect. According to sources, Electronic Arts faced financial pressure and chose to back a Star Wars project over its beloved space RPG series.

If you know the history, the irony is hard to miss. The studio created its flagship series because it wanted its own space universe, one not tied to Star Wars. Now the game that sealed its fate is a third Battlefront, a series set in the very galaxy the team once stepped away from.

That is a cruel twist for a team that wanted breathing room from that franchise, and it shows how much the publisher's priorities have changed since BioWare first joined. BioWare and Star Wars have a long shared history. In 2007, Electronic Arts bought the studio on the promise of an ambitious Star Wars game.

Nearly two decades later, the publisher closed it for almost the same reason.

Last week, EA announced it was shutting down the team behind role-playing series like Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Several factors played into that, but the biggest was a fresh opportunity with Disney and Lucasfilm to make Star Wars: Battlefront 3, according to people familiar with the company's strategy.

Put on a business hat for a moment, and the decision looks simple. You have a space game that, to someone who knows nothing about video games, looks a lot like Star Wars, and you have the real Star Wars franchise sitting right there. You cannot spend 300 million dollars on both, so you pick the one with the name everybody recognizes. That is essentially the argument the reporter makes, and it is probably what happened in the end.

It also doesn't help that BioWare hasn't been winning much lately. The team used Frostbite for several of its recent games and struggled to get them out the door, and its track record has been shaky for ten years or more. Consistent hits have been missing. In business, nobody asks what you did years ago; they ask what you have done for them lately, and no amount of goodwill from the original trilogy changes that for the people holding the budget.

When EA executives reviewed the portfolio for the next few years, they found two sci-fi action games expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars each: Star Wars: Battlefront 3 and the next Mass Effect. They went with Star Wars and closed BioWare as a result, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

Battlefront hasn't even entered development yet.

Executives saw it as a safer, more predictable bet than a new RPG, and the publisher behind Battlefield has always felt more at home with shooters than role-playing games. Neither game was going to be cheap, which is why the choice came down to one or the other. With a budget that size, executives gravitated toward the project that looked less likely to surprise them.

From a purely business standpoint, the logic is easy to follow. The publisher is behind FIFA and Madden, and knows how to run annual sports releases, so it makes sense that it would see shooters as the next area worth betting on instead of pouring that money into a role-playing studio.

Still, there is a fair argument that things could have gone differently. If the team had been given enough time on Unreal Engine, that engine could have helped the next game stand out as something special. That would have broken the studio's recent habit of building on Frostbite.

A television adaptation is also still in production, which complicates things. If the rights have been licensed and the publisher stands to make money from how the show performs, it is hard to see how it could cut ties with the property. Nothing is impossible, though, and a change down the road would be welcome news for fans, but that is where the series stands right now.

Plenty of people see this as a big mistake.

The two projects belong to completely different genres, even if both are set in space. Battlefront is a multiplayer shooter, and that is where the real money sits, because skins and other items sold on the multiplayer side keep players coming back.

A campaign is a nice extra, but it doesn't drive revenue. The series' strength is its story. It is a narrative-driven role-playing game, not a competitive shooter. BioWare could have brought back the multiplayer mode from Andromeda, which may or may not have worked, or the studio could have found another approach, such as regular DLC packs like the ones the third game received.

That third game is a phenomenal experience right up until the end, and the ending soured it for a lot of people. If you haven't played the series, Legendary Edition is the far better way to go in. It bundles the first three games with improved visuals and the better ending content, which makes it the definitive way to experience the story.

Longtime fans have replayed these games an absurd number of times, with the first one racking up dozens of playthroughs for some people, and plenty of them never even finished Legendary Edition because they had already seen it so often.

Whatever you pick, stick to the trilogy. Andromeda is only worth your time if you loved the world enough to see what happens next. If you want more, pick up Drew Karpyshyn's first novel. It is a really good book, and it explains why Anderson and Saren clash so sharply in the first game.

Corporate politics may have played a part too.

Over the summer, the publisher shuffled its executive ranks, promoting sports veterans David Tinson and Cam Weber while sidelining Laura Miele, who oversaw the company's studios and had advocated for BioWare and its space RPG series, according to people familiar with the internal politics.

When asked about the closure, an EA spokesperson said the company reached the decision together after months of planning, review and analysis, including careful thought about changing business conditions, industry dynamics and long-term priorities. No further specifics were offered.

The studio's last three games underperformed, and that is hard to argue with. Even so, the team looked like it was finally hitting its stride, which makes the situation harder to accept. For now, this does look like the end of the line. Fans have started a Save Mass Effect campaign, and the publisher has a simple way to respond. All it needs to say is that the series will continue.

Even if BioWare is gone, a short statement that the franchise will not be allowed to die would go a long way, and it could double as a marketing opportunity, like the pizza brand character that's been showing up on social media. It hurts to see BioWare disappear.

The team in Edmonton works hard and cares about its games, which anyone who has visited the studio and met the developers can confirm.

The problem is the lack of a hit in a decade, and that adds up to a lot of sunk cost when you are weighing another 300-million-dollar bet. That covers where things stand. BioWare gave players Dragon Age and a sci-fi trilogy that people still replay, and even with its rough recent stretch, the name carried real weight.

The decision to back Star Wars: Battlefront 3 over a new RPG will be debated for a long time, and the closure leaves Dragon Age's future as uncertain as everything else the studio built. If you want the sci-fi series to survive, keep an eye on the campaign fans have started. Until then, the trilogy is still there to replay through Legendary Edition.