Mass Effect 5's future in doubt after EA's $55 billion buyout, says former EA manager

EA's $55 billion leveraged buyout — backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners — has thrown BioWare's future into question. Former EA senior manager Emmanuel Rosier, now director of market intelligence at Newzoo, told PC Gamer he isn't confident Mass Effect 5 will survive the new ownership's financial scrutiny.

Rosier spent nearly a decade at EA working closely with BioWare and was blunt about the studio's standing. "In the middle you have these IPs like the BioWare IPs," he said. "They've been struggling as a studio, as a brand have been struggling in recent years, and I don't know if they will keep funding that one. I think that's the biggest question mark for me." On Mass Effect 5 specifically, he added: "I will believe it when I see it, the next Mass Effect game, let's put it that way." His concern is partly structural — BioWare projects routinely stretch for years, driving development costs up, and new investors with no emotional attachment to the back catalogue are likely to make purely financial calls. "They can pull the plug very, very easily," Rosier said.

The worry isn't coming out of nowhere. BioWare has had a rough run since Dragon Age: Inquisition's franchise-best sales. Anthem was a live-service misfire, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed badly enough that EA downsized the studio significantly afterward. Mass Effect Andromeda was widely seen as a disappointment, though the Mass Effect Legendary Edition remaster landed well. With EA's new owners expected to double down on the company's most reliable earners — EA Sports FC, Madden, Battlefield — a slow-burning RPG from a studio on a losing streak is an obvious candidate for the chopping block. Mass Effect 5 has been in early development with a small team for some time and still has no release window.

What BioWare has shared about Mass Effect 5 paints an ambitious picture: the game is set hundreds of years after Mass Effect 3, back in the Milky Way long after the Reapers were defeated, with fan-favourite Liara returning alongside the geth and races from Andromeda. Whether that vision ever makes it to players now depends heavily on whether EA's new financial backers see value in letting BioWare roll the dice one more time.