Two days after Electronic Arts announced BioWare’s closure, federal NDP leader Avi Lewis proposed a different ending. In a series of Bluesky posts, he said the Edmonton studio’s developers should get “the first opportunity – and the federal support” to buy it and run it themselves, MobileSyrup reports.
Lewis blamed private equity for the closure. EA was taken private in August in a leveraged buyout backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, which loaded the company with debt and brought cost cuts to R&D. BioWare’s closure was part of a wider cut of about 400 jobs at EA.
Lewis didn’t attach a dollar figure. The NDP doesn’t hold enough seats to make it happen, and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government hasn’t said anything about BioWare. The reporting didn’t include a response from EA.
Why it matters: The proposal is a long shot. EA owns the Mass Effect and Dragon Age games, and a studio without its games is mostly people. But those people are the point. Canada’s game industry contributed more than $5 billion to GDP in 2024, and experienced developers like BioWare’s are exactly the talent other provinces and countries will try to recruit. Whether anyone in government tries to keep them in Alberta is the real question.
