BioWare has shut down, and while that doesn’t inherently mean we won’t be seeing more Mass Effect—EA owns the rights to that IP—the next Mass Effect game has been cancelled, and I certainly wouldn’t hold my breath for EA to make anything that isn’t sports, Sims, or shooter related in the near future.
According to sources who spoke to IGN, however, the TV series, which has been in the works at Prime Video since 2024, will still go ahead. It’ll be set after the original trilogy, so it won’t be quite so awkward as seeing Commander Shepard making winks and nods to a series of games built by a slowly-dismantled studio, but still.
There’s something deeply bittersweet about a videogame series arriving after the studio responsible for its creation has gone out of business. And perhaps reflective of how EA has treated BioWare itself—grabbing a studio known for making some of the best RPGs ever—and chipping away at it. Coasting on the good will from a studio it had precious little interest in managing and rarely gave a fair shot at doing what it was actually good at.
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I mean, just look at Anthem. I could point to any number of developer tell-alls that might suggest EA didn’t know what to do with the studio it’d bought. Or former executive producer Mark Darrah, who said: “Someone once described to me EA as a hedge fund with a videogame hobby that it wished it didn’t spend so much money on. And I think that remains true.”
Dragon Age: The Veilguard itself went through development hell as a live service game, only to come out and meet with middling reviews. I had plenty of negative things to say about it, but the fact we still got a semi-decent action RPG out of that slow-motion trainwreck is honestly commendable. The lesson EA seemingly took, however, was that it should’ve committed to that live service vision than just… I don’t know, having the studio famed for single-player RPGs make a single-player RPG from the get-go?
In this sense, the deal with Prime feels like the last wringing out of a nearly-dry towel. The final few drops of profitability to be had out of Mass Effect before a final nail is driven into its coffin and, in true EA fashion, if it is good, it’ll be created by people who the publisher can’t rightfully stake any claim or credit over. BioWare’s legacy’ll live on less uncomfortably in the games it inspired, though, of that I’m sure.
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