Canadian opposition leader proposes helping BioWare employees buy out the studio
Avi Lewis, leader of Canada's New Democratic Party, has called on the federal government to help BioWare employees buy the studio and run it themselves.
The call follows the closure of the Edmonton team behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Lewis blamed Electronic Arts and the private equity model itself for what happened.
For Canada, BioWare was long more than a game developer. The Edmonton studio made the country's best employers lists several times, including after 2007, when Electronic Arts acquired it. In 2025, EA itself agreed to a buyout by a consortium of investors that included Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. The deal cost $55 billion and took the publisher private.
Lewis went after that model in his social media posts:
This is private equity, this is what it does. Buy up businesses, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for short-term profit. The developers at BioWare know how to run the studio. They know how to make the games we all love. They should be given the first opportunity–and the federal support–to buy it and run it themselves. And if we want to avoid the Mass Effect effect in Canada, we should be keeping private equity out, not welcoming it in.
The New Democratic Party is traditionally Canada's third-largest political force and sits center-left. In the 2025 federal election, it won only 7 seats in parliament and lost official party status. Its course has drifted toward the center in recent years, and Lewis was elected leader specifically to bring back a firmer left-wing position.
The new leader has already spoken out in support of anti-fascist initiatives and called for the nationalization of key industries that have fallen under the control of large international companies. Some of his followers responded to the BioWare post by jokingly suggesting the studio be nationalized too.
BioWare was founded in 1995 by three doctors: Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. Over three decades, the studio released games that shaped the RPG genre:
Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Jade Empire
the Mass Effect trilogy
the Dragon Age series
The studio's last release was Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which came out in 2024. After that, BioWare focused on the next Mass Effect.
The Canadian government has not yet responded to the opposition leader's call. Electronic Arts is also declining to comment on the possibility of selling the studio to its employees.
