Report: EA picked Star Wars Battlefront 3 over Mass Effect before closing BioWare
Bloomberg says EA saw a third Battlefront as the safer bet than BioWare's Mass Effect, though the Lucasfilm game has not yet entered production.
EA shut BioWare and cancelled its next Mass Effect on October 21 mainly to make room for a third Star Wars Battlefront, according to a Bloomberg report by Jason Schreier published on October 30. The account comes from unnamed sources inside EA and has not been confirmed by the publisher, which closed the studio with its last 50 developers still on the Mass Effect project.
Two expensive sci-fi shooters, one slot
Per Bloomberg, EA was offered a chance to make another Battlefront with Lucasfilm. Executives reviewing the slate then had two sci-fi action games on the books, each expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and judged the Star Wars shooter the lower-risk bet. That game has not started production yet. Game Developer, also citing Bloomberg, says Respawn and DICE are set to work together on a new project that is likely the next Battlefront.
The report adds a boardroom angle. Laura Miele, the executive long seen as BioWare's backer inside EA, was described as sidelined, while chief operating officer David Tinson and chief studios officer Cam Weber gained influence. Tinson and Weber signed the October staff letter announcing roughly 400 layoffs across the company.
An EA spokesperson said the decision followed "months of planning, review, and analysis" of business conditions and long-term priorities.
A long slide before the final cut
Battlefront was the last push, not the only one. Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed its sales target by around half, Mass Effect: Andromeda landed badly in 2017, and Anthem stumbled as a live-service game in 2019. EA had already shrunk BioWare to a skeleton crew before the closure. All of this followed the $55 billion buyout of EA by a group including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners.
The choice also cuts against EA's own recent strategy. Game Developer's Bryant Francis pointed out that EA cancelled a Respawn Star Wars shooter about two years ago while saying it wanted to rely less on licensed brands. Now it has dropped one of its most valuable wholly owned series for a licensed one. There is a bitter twist in the history too: EA bought BioWare in 2007 partly on the strength of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
What comes next
Mass Effect remains an EA-owned series, and nothing in the reporting points to a revival. Anyone hoping for Battlefront 3 soon should temper expectations, since a game that has not entered production and carries a budget this size is years away. Expect EA to keep its focus on sports, Battlefield, Apex Legends and Respawn's Star Wars Jedi line, the projects its staff letter said would continue.
Source: PC Gamer; Bloomberg (Jason Schreier); Polygon; Game Developer.
