Fan builds cardboard memorial honoring closed EA studios outside Vancouver office

Reddit user u/Xveers installed a cardboard memorial outside Electronic Arts’ Vancouver headquarters, a tribute reported on Nov. 1, 2026, marking the studios the publisher has closed. The fan said BioWare’s closure prompted the display. ‘So a day of cutting, painting, printing and taping ended with this little display getting set up outside their offices,’ u/Xveers wrote.

Cardboard graves list BioWare (1995-2026), Bullfrog (1987-2001), Pandemic (1988-2009), Origin (1983-2004), Visceral (1998-2017), Westwood (1985-2003), and Maxis (1987-present, with the poster arguing 2017). The fan spent a full day cutting, painting, printing, and taping the pieces before setting them up outside EA’s offices.

EA announced on Oct. 22, 2026, that it was closing BioWare and canceling Mass Effect 5, loosely slated for 2028, with more than 400 employees facing layoffs. The publisher called BioWare legendary, said it does not take the decision lightly, and pledged to support the team through the transition.

A GLITCHED article dated Oct. 22, 2026, lists at least 19 studios EA acquired and later closed or absorbed, among them Origin Systems (acquired 1992, closed 2004), Bullfrog (acquired 1995, closed 2001), Maxis (acquired 1997, closed 2015), Westwood (acquired 1998, closed 2003), Pandemic (acquired 2007, closed 2009), Visceral (closed 2017), and BioWare (acquired 2007, closed 2026). GLITCHED gives no shutdown explanation where none went beyond a restructure.

TheGamer ties the shutdowns to EA strategy: Bullfrog merged into EA UK as talent followed Peter Molyneux to Lionhead; Pandemic closed after a costly Dark Knight cancellation during the 2008 financial crisis; Origin’s single-player titles ended as EA pushed live-service games; Visceral shut as EA stepped back from linear single-player games; Maxis effectively closed after SimCity (2013); Westwood struggled under strict schedules after EA bought it for $122.5 million. EA acquired BioWare in 2007 for roughly $US1.2 billion.

BioWare, founded in 1995 by three Canadian doctors who met at the University of Alberta, made Baldur’s Gate (1998), Baldur’s Gate 2 (2000), and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), then began Mass Effect in 2004 with a 130-person team and more than 20,000 lines of spoken dialogue. Dragon Age: Inquisition launched in 2014 and sold more than 12 million copies, the studio’s bestseller.

Anthem (2019) drew mixed reviews, missed EA’s commercial expectations, and had its servers shut down in January 2026, leaving it unplayable. Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), the final major release, had been in development since 2014 as a planned live-service multiplayer game; David Gaider said EA set it up to fail. Gaider said EA holds BioWare’s IP, making new Mass Effect or Dragon Age games unlikely soon.

The #SaveMassEffect petition passed more than 275,000 signatures, nearly 300,000 in some reports, urging EA to give the series to a different studio though it omits the laid-off BioWare employees. Kala Elizabeth, Ariel Aguilar, and Mer launched a GoFundMe on Oct. 27, 2026, for billboards at EA’s Redwood City headquarters, the Edmonton office, and the Game Awards in Los Angeles on Dec. 10; it reached $5,274 in under 15 minutes and is no longer collecting.

The group hopes to send excess money to the Game Worker Hardship Fund run by United Videogame Workers-CWA, though as of late October 2026 direct donations were not yet available; otherwise it will fund other help for laid-off developers. Gemma Driscoll of Good Game Spawn Squad said she was gutted and argued studios are reduced to numbers on spreadsheets.