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Corporations, especially profitable ones often lay off workers to cut costs and increase profitability. There is a saying, if you aren't growing, your dying.
This isn't always correct. Many studios that have been killed by various companies were absolutely NOT profitable.
This isn't true. Selling millions of copies can still be a failure. That's the problem with AAA studios. They often have absolutely bloated and astronomically high development costs due to mismanagement and other factors that create situations where a game isn't successful even if it does sell millions of copies. If a game costs 300 million dollars, it needs to sell 6 to 7 million copies to break even. Remember, not every dollar of the game's cost necessarily goes to the developer.
BioWare was not profitable. BioWare hadn't released a hit game since Dragon Age Inquisition. Though Andromeda made money, it barely made money. EA cancelled all DLC plans for the game as they didn't think it was worth the ROI to continue to pump money into it. Anthem cost upwards of 200 million dollars and though it reportedly sold around 5 million units over its lifetime, it missed internal targets expected of it. That never goes over with executives and shareholders. Keep in mind it was a $60 game and $20 of that could easily have gone to digital distribution and retail distribution sales. Thus, 5 million copies sold doesn't necessarily equate to 200 million dollars. The game was also a live service game that couldn't retain players. While it's not the totally unmitigated disaster Concord and Highguard were, it was a failure. It wasn't really profitable. It also took up 6 years of development time where the studio could have been doing other things. Thus, it wasn't worth the cost or time even if it broke even. (Which it likely didn't.)
EDIT: Updated the numbers for Dragon Age as I relooked up the information and found newer estimates on sales.
Dragon Age the Veilguard cost between 250 and 300 million and only sold 1.9 million units as of 2026 across all platforms. That's the high estimate. This means that the game made upwards of 114 million dollars, but even that's a high estimate because the game was being given away a short time after it released. This is still less than half what it needs to break even.
So lets recap for the mathematically challenged here. BioWare, wasn't insolvent only because EA was paying the bills. As a subsidiary, it wasn't making money. It hadn't really made money since Dragon Age III. Even when money was technically made, all of their offerings post DAIII fell short of expectations. So, here are the numbers. It's also worth noting that this is before digital distribution and retailers take their cut which can be upwards of 30% or more of each individual sale. Keep that in mind.
Mass Effect Andromeda:
Budget - 80 to 100 million dollars.
Units sold - 3-5 million lifetime.
Target Sales - 9 million lifetime units.
Revenue - 180 million or so.
Status: Underperformer. Not a flop, but still falling well short of EA's expectations and performing worse than every other entry into the series.
Anthem
Budget - 100-200 million dollars
Units Sold - Between 3 and 5 million lifetime units
Target Sales - It was a live service game, so it's revenue projections were likely something akin to Destiny's or something similar. The game made its money from initial sales rather than protracted microtransactions.
Revenue - 180 million or so?
Status: Underperformer at best. It's hard to say here, but even if it made back a 200m investment cost, it failed to retain players and was DOA as a live service game. So it missed projections by a long shot here. Like Andromeda, it might have made some money, but not enough to support long term.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard:
Budget - 250-300 million dollars
Units Sold - 1.9 million copies sold across all platforms (as of 2026) is the highest estimate I could find. The company only said 1.5 million players of engagement in a company earnings call which is public. But lets use the 1.9 million figure to be nice.
Target Sales - We don't know what EA's actual target was, but it would have needed to sell somewhere between 4 and 6 million units to break even. It would need to be solidly over that to be profitable.
Revenue - At 1.9 million copies sold,. around 114 million dollars before everyone gets there cut. Sony, Steam and XBOX certainly would have taken their cuts. EA's own app is the only place EA would have gotten all the money of each sale. This doesn't even crack half the game's development costs.
Status: Flop
You have to understand that the only game that really made money here would have been Dragon Age III. It sold around 10-12 million copies to date. That means it made money. And that money would have been what sustained BioWare going forward. It's been 12 years since BioWare had a hit on their hands. During that time, 250-300 million dollars was spent on Dragon Age alone. We don't know how much had been spent on Mass Effect 5, but it would have been in the millions given it was in development for six years. All of the money made, you can take 30% off the top for digital and retail sales. Do the math and the picture becomes clear. Even if the studio wasn't completely insolvent without EA's help, the studio was bleeding EA like a parasite and would continue to do so until Mass Effect 5's release at the very least. Given it was still in early development with a team of only 50 people, that game was YEARS away from release.
In other words, BioWare wasn't profitable. No amount of justification is going to change the math. It had one disappointing release after another. Andromeda didn't make much money. Anthem didn't make much money if any at all. Dragon Age the Veilguard lost a shit ton of money. Mass Effect 5 was YEARS away from completion and I doubt their EA and Saudi overlords had confidence the studio could actually deliver given their track record over the last decade or so.
Yes, profitable studios sometimes get closed when they aren't profitable enough. It's about risk analysis and return on investment for the executives and the accounting departments. BioWare's track record and thus reputation was in the toilet. It wasn't a profitable studio that was unfairly gutted before its time. If anything, EA kept BioWare alive on the vine far longer than it has other underperforming studios in the past.
Now, I didn't forget about Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Unfortunately, we do not know how long that was in development, nor how much it cost to make. Obviously, it was cheaper than a new full release. We don't really know how much it made either. The game sold around 2.3 million units best I can tell. However, that's over its lifetime so far. We don't know how many copies were at the full $59.99 price tag and how many were discounted. It's gone on substantial discounts over the years coming in at $5 and $10 a lot of times. What we do know is that between the buckets of ME5 and Failguard, any profit it made was likely eaten up by the failure and the game that hadn't been finished.
In the interest of full disclosure, we don't have every number involved. BioWare works for EA, so that money went to EA. We do know that EA took an absolute beating when Veilguard launched between it and FC 25 (formerly FIFA) or whatever it was under performing, EA disclosed a loss of around half a billion dollars that quarter. This resulted in a 6 billion dollar loss in stock value early this year. So stop calling BioWare profitable and solvent. It was nothing of the kind.
I got Mass Effect Legendary Edition for free on an Amazon Prime giveaway in 2022, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. Great freebie though. Thanks, Jeff!
to depicting a white character as non-white.