I'm fine with Halo moving to Activision. Halo studios had their chance multiple times and there are plenty of super talented FPS devs at Activision that are just waiting to get off COD support duty.
Honestly the best thing now would be if the sheer greed/desperation at EA from the huge debt the Saudis and Kushner forced on them leads to them actually selling off or licencing out IPs, something EA has historically been extremely averse to doing (for no clear reason). So in a sense Halo going to Activision is similar to the best case here now. Some other studio buying or licencing ME.
Eh. Could be worse. The real monkey's paw would be a company buying it who would never actually use it and/or never actually put out a narrative game. I'd honestly prefer Ubisoft buy it to say, Paradox.
If the paw doesn't curl, maybe CDPR can buy it though.
Dream scenario really is the spiritual successor type games being good. We need more titles like Greedfall where other studios try the Bioware formula. Im willing to give up the ME ip to get away from EA
Well fuck, I am also legit crushed. I was really looking forward to a new Mass Effect game, and I just like Bioware in general. This is really shitty news yall
oh man, this news is hitting me emotionally and physically the same way a death of someone close is hitting and im not sure why. this is incredibly sad.
I managed my expectations on a new mass effect game. Of course I wanted to be back in the world.
But this still really hurts to hear. Wish something could have happened to help them. Not sure if dragon ages poor performance quickened this result.
On another note, I wish studios would stop announcing games before they have something concrete. What was the point of that teaser all those years ago if they are still considering it early development today?
I imagine they put out those teasers so they could go back and tell the publishing execs "See? People are still excited about Mass Effect! There's still a market for it!"
Guess even that wasn't enough, though. An ignominious end for one of, if not the single most important studio in western RPG history.
Tbf, I feel like any excitement for a new Mass Effect game has always been tempered by a lot of skepticism. And given that these comments are filled with people saying that it probably would have been a disappointment, can you even really blame the execs for not being convinced?
What’s frustrating is people don’t thinka new Mass Effect itself would be disappointing just one made by current Bioware would be.
Mass Effect has the name recognition to be a successful franchise it just needs to made by a team that understands what made the OG trilogy so beloved. Strong characters and good writing is what the franchise needs.
Kind of like how WotC (I know, I know) brought Larian on to develop BG3. They realized those folks probably understood what made BG great better than any of the people still at Bioware. And considering how long it had been since BG2, I imagine hardly any of those same devs remained anywa, similar as how few of the people that made Mass Effect great were still there either
And then WoTC let go or lost pretty much all of the D&D team that worked with Larian on BG3 since the beginning, resulting in Larian turning down the option to do more with D&D and instead returned to their own IP.
Modern popular game IP owners are largely horrible stewards of their worlds.
It's going to be forgotten now but that ME4 trailer was the last thing played at that Games Awards. That's huge, and goes to show the goodwill this series had even before the Legendary Edition came in and got a whole lot more people into it.
Unless this Amazon show that'll probably never be made interferes with the rights (God, it's like 1990s Doctor Who all over again), I do think the IP will be snapped up for that reason. The trilogy has cachet, and not just amongst us lot who've played it ten times.
I mean, we gotta hope EA's new management are willing to licence out or sell off IPs. The problem with EA for the last 25-ish years has been that, even when they stop using an IP, they generally refuse to licence it out or sell it off, and rarely even use it again with an EA studio (usually only in a one-off mobile game, if at all). The legendary "EA Vault" people sometimes refer to where the IPs all go to be hoarded for no reason.
But maybe the sheer greed of the new owners will change that?
Yea I had a feeling this was coming. It was announced years ago, but all anyone had to say was that it was Early pre prodcution for so long. Wonder if they knew it was coming after veilguard and were just riding it out ?
Feels awful to know so many people just lost their livlihoods cus EA is disgusting
I just assumed it wasn't coming out when we stopped getting new news about it for years. I figured it was in dev purgatory and never going to really happen.
I am sad but this is honestly for the best. The last game that felt like a "real" Bioware game was 12 years ago. And let's be real the next Mass Effect game probably would be just another let down.
it was a good run...not everything needs to last forever
What a fucking shame. The Mass Effect series had so much potential that’s been squandered over the past 14 years. It had the potential to be a really expansive universe across games & other media.
I don’t think anything will ever come close to Mass Effect for me either. It has the best cast of characters in all of gaming. I love them so much. Other games like FF7, Persona 5, Undertale & Red Dead Redemption 2 have wonderful casts too. But man, the Mass Effect characters are just simply the best. It’s a shame we’ll never see more of that.
The best characters I've encountered in any story regardless of genre. The Citadel DLC made me cry. I love all of those flawed but faithful dwerps and, to this day, wish I had a best friend like Garrus.
Can't believe the studio that created the RPG legends that are KOTOR and Mass Effect comes to such an ignominious end. Gutted. They (and we) deserve better, smh...now we all just get to wonder what could've been
I don't think there was anyone left from when they made those games anyway. Casey Hudson, Caroline Livingstone, Ryan Hoyle, Melanie Faulknor, and Dan Fessenden all made Arcanaut Studios and are developing Fate of the Old Republic as we speak. Drew Karpyshyn, James Ohlen, and Chad Robertson fled Bioware 7 years ago and are about to release Exodus next year, and David Gaider went to found an Australian indie studio I don't recall the name of. Not a single lead writer or developer or even their seconds that handled key characters/aspects from the days of KOTOR/KOTOR II, Mass Effect, the first two DA games, Baldur's Gate, or Neverwinter is still with the studio, and none of them have been for years now. The studio has existed in name only since about 2018 with only a few key members staying a couple years longer until they left during Veilguard's development.
This btw is exactly the same reason why people keep getting surprised when Obsidian releases a dud. The Obsidian they knew is again largely not there. With pretty much just the exception of Sawyer, who tbf did make the fantastic Pentiment
“Early development” on mass effect is wild to say for a game they announced 6 years ago. Absolutely ridiculous that in 6 years they never made progress on the game. Utterly insane.
Ya know what, I’m not even mad. Fuck it. Hopefully ea and its new owners sell off IP to get some cash back and someone who gives a damn can make the next game
Add American McGee's Alice to the list. I'll never forgive EA what they did to the man, they crushed his spirit so hard he basically dropped anything related to videogames.
Same thing when Halo studios got shut. 6 years and all they had was "we want campaign, multi-player and forge to be avaliable day one" like that's some lofty goal
Being a dragon age fan seeing that your game was probably the last nail in the coffin has to be harsh too lmao. It's sad we will never see a satisfying ending for these games now. Mass effect and dragon age officially ended with a fart.
Agreed. I think the mass effect IP still has enough weight that they may try getting a more competent studio to take over (nothing against old BioWare, just the iteration of the past few years)
This is just anecdotal evidence. I’m in my 30s and I remember playing ME2 and ME3 during their release periods, and even Andromeda still holds up in my opinion. Through some mutual friends, I’m in a gaming group primarily made up of early to mid 20s people, and none of them really have any knowledge or appreciation of Mass Effect, other than knowing it exists. Unfortunately, I just don’t think it has the long lasting weight that it would need. Going so far between releases certainly does not help
It's not unusual. They did the bulk of the development for their last 3 games all within the last 15 months of development despite having 4 to 6 years to work on all of them. They didn't even know what Anthem would even look like when they were making their E3 trailer and nearly cut flying out of the game when it was a core mechanic.
We knew this was bound to happen, so sad we might never see another ME game. But to be honest it’s probably for the best. They would never live up to the original trilogy. At least we got the LE for its final send off.
its weird to me because i swear i feel like mass effect could generate a lot of money if they took their time on it. but thats what i think is wrong with the gaming industry barely anyone wants to take the time to make a good game and rather make a quick buck.
Which is a shame because while there has been some truly wonderful multiplayer games the single player rpgs are just more immersion and world building and id hate to lose that
Why bother? Better spit out another FIFA every year. Studio itself/studio belonging to publicly traded company is a kiss of death for any creativity or originality.
Broadsword took over SWTOR and they’re actually doing an excellent job (new raid coming out in December, the cosmetic outfits are damn good, 8.0 update impending with new levels and story)
I think only Larian or CDPR would be able to do it justice BUT it would still be different. But with all the things they have going on now, this won’t happen. Sad day indeed.
This isn’t true in my opinion. If you handle an IP right and open it up to other creatives to try to tell the story you can get some gems. Look at XCOM handling Star Wars, Total War creating games for War Hammer, and maybe even Lord of the Rings across the decades. Game IPs don’t need to languish in one studios hands and other universes have managed to handle the risk and opportunities in both gaming media and in other media forms.
The corporations who own these amazing game IPs suck because they take down the franchises with them rather than find a way to license it to make interesting stories at different levels of investment. Not every game needs to be AAA.
Remember Mass Effect was something we only got because they weren't doing another KotOR. Whatever brilliant game devs are cooking up that's new and at most a spiritual successor can be every bit as great as ME was and as KotOR was.
The corporate, “indefinite hiatus” talk is always exhausting, but stuff like this makes me see why they do it. It’s gutting, but probably for the best, to hear it so unapologetic as “early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending”. If by some miracle it gets picked up or sold, it’s not like it’ll be less exciting; probably more, if we’re being honest.
A few ex-BioWare legends have started studios; whether it’s with them or not, I hope the people losing their jobs have connections and at least support eachother like this says they will. I can’t imagine just putting all that art in the shredder like that after spending half a decade on it
It's a very bad look if you sell (or lease) your IP and then someone else makes a hit game with it, but not you. Look at what it took to get another Obsidian Fallout game - Microsoft owning both Obsidian and Bethesda AND basically telling them "you're working on Fallout now". When Obsidian have been on record for years saying that they would want to return to that universe.
Yeah EA is mostly to blame, but so is BioWare. They just weren’t the same studio anymore. Despite the development hell that was Veilguard, it still showed they really didn’t have it anymore for writing which was their whole thing.
It's tricky to place blame because a lot of the newer staff at Bioware genuinely was pretty incompetent, but the only reason they were there was because the people that made the studio great left because they'd had enough of EA's bullshit. I would still say it's ultimately EA's fault but the mistakes of the staff over the last 12 or so years shouldn't be swept under the rug either.
One of the saddest and clearest example of how greed ruins art.
Went from pumping out the entire Mass effect trilogy plus two Dragon Age games in the span of 4-5 years to releasing okay to mediocre to bad games for the next 12 years, and not nearly at the same pace.
One thing I always wonder is how can it even be profitable to take a successful studio and ruin it like this? Did EA break even at all in the end?
On the one hand this is sad, but if they're calling the work on ME4 "early" it was inevitable. They announced that back in 2020, and had a teaser trailer in 2023. They should have been done or nearly done by now. If they hadn't even progressed past "early" in 6 years, it was never happening.
Anthem had the bones for a fantastic game. If they put the work in to fix its issues I think it would've been quite the hit.
But it's definitely their fault for dicking around 7+ years waiting for "BioWare magic" to kick in instead of developing their game responsibly.
It's sad to see them go definitively but tbh most of the creative talent that they are referencing has gone and the quality of their games kept getting worse. It's a shame but not surprising at all.
BioWare doesn’t own the IP, EA does. The studio at this point has no value to them and selling BioWare would only generate income if they included the ip which they won’t.
EA will either sit on the IP or get another studio to make a mass effect game.
Yep EA especially is just like a goddamn dragon with hoarding this stuff. Its practically tradition for them to buy a studio, shut it down, then sit on all their ips forever, likely forgetting they existed.
Though, I do not see EA doing anything to build new brands which are not mass compatible in the future unless we see a sudden huge economic uptick.
From EA:
As we focus on these larger opportunities, we’ve had a small team at BioWare working on early-development for Mass Effect. We’ve made the decision not to move forward with this development, which means we’re closing the studio and our Edmonton workspace. BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we do not take this decision lightly.
EA SPORTS continues to operate from a position of strength. We are fully committed and investing in the global growth of our FC franchise and across the full EA SPORTS portfolio. We have two new projects in development you’ll hear about over the next few months, including a brand-new, social-first open-world experience for our American Football team that we call “Project Gridiron,” and we are also in pre-production to bring back a beloved, fan-favorite in Fight Night, leveraging capabilities from our simulation fighting team.
In Lifestyle, we’re focusing on the long-term potential of The Sims and skate. We’re going to prioritize our efforts on “Project Evergreen” for The Sims to give the team more time to reach the full potential and vision for the game, and to help make this possible, we’re pausing development on “Project Lotus.” For skate., we’ve had a lot of success in bringing players into the game, and we need to create an experience that keeps them engaged over the long-term. To do that, we are making changes to the studio to have a more focused, smaller team to deliver on a very clear roadmap for our community that we believe will build a healthier and more sustainable business.
I grew up in and around Edmonton when BioWare was at it's highest with Mass Effect. It was something to be really proud of that a small Canadian upstart was able to make such a big impact in the gaming world.
No one can take that achievement away from them. Those games are storytelling and gameplay of the highest caliber, and I count myself fortunate to have played them.
Two important things for us all to remember after reading these sad news:
The Mass Effect games we all love so dearly will always be available for us to replay as many times as we want. Garrus, Liara, Tali, Wrex and the rest of the gang will always be there whenever life throws shit our way and we need a distraction.
The BioWare team that made those games is no longer around. Whatever Mass Effect 4 might have become, it would most likely have differed greatly from what we're used to.
With that being said, I am of course really, really sad right now. The Mass Effect universe deserves to be expanded and for new stories to be set in it. Here's hoping the Mass Effect IP goes to another great developer!
Thank you for a drop of positivity in this thread. At least the main trilogy is a fully fleshed out story. I'd love to see another studio get a chance to make Mass Effect.
F, been ages since they made a good game but still tragic. Hope the Mass Effect IP is at least sold off to a studio that can do the franchise justice instead of just wasting away in EA's vault.
Fuck EA, fuck Saudi Arabia. Honestly it was copium thinking they weren't going to mess with Mass Effect somehow...but I didn't expect full BioWare closure...
Crazy such a popular and great IP is so easily thrown in the bin like that when it has so much potential still. It should be printing money and success. It's too good to be wasted.
Sucks to hear when going through the trilogy for my 3rd time too.
Baldur's Gate was always owned by WotC, it was a licensed DnD game. They just gave the license to Larian to develop 3 since Bioware wasn't up to it anymore.
Mass Effect is owned by EA. They may task some other internal studio with developing a followup sometime in the future, but I honestly doubt it. They almost certainly will never sell or even license it.
That said, the upcoming Expanse game looks fairly Mass Effect-coded, and Exodus) is effectively a spiritual successor to ME, even having a number of the key developers who were responsible for ME 1 and 2.
I agree, it’s sad to see such a rich universe with so much untapped potential being basically abandoned, but we did get 3 great games out of it, and another game that eventually became great in its own way. Andromeda had sooo much potential, but it got in its own way a lot, too.
I do think, mechanically the games improved over each iteration (Andromeda was imo undeniably a smoother experience gameplay-wise than even ME3, which was smoother than ME2, and ME1 was clunky af sometimes). But the writing and details suffered in Andromeda.
Back to my original point: there were a lot more stories to tell in the ME universe, but we did get to have a hell of a good time in it while it lasted. So I’m glad we at least got we got out of it. Still my favorite franchise of all time.
Larian worked with Wizards of the Coast to make Baldurs Gate 3. They didn’t like working with them which is why they didn’t make BG3 dlc and their next project is Divinity which is their IP.
If EA sells their IP it is totally possible for a different studio to make the game. However selling IP like that isn’t very common.
Wizards of the Coast owns IP for Baldur's Gate. Developers like BioWare and Larian Studios created individual titles under license. WotC retain full rights to the setting, characters, and future games.
I wish I could be more upset about this. But honestly, I'd been preparing for this announcement for years now, even before the Saudi/Kushner buyout. This might honestly be for the best for the legacy of the series.
It will live on in the many talented and creative modders still making incredible things for the Legendary Edition as well as in Exodus.
Good night sweet prince. I’ll choose to remember the good times and good memories over the bad. Your games defined my childhood and set my imagination wild.
Does anyone know... Is there any chance someone else could get the rights to mass effect one day and take a shot at it? Kinda like what happened with baldurs gate 3
I imagine that EA owns the rights to Mass Effect. They could have a 5th game developed by a different studio or outsource it. If they think it would be worth the investment ME5 could definitely happen.
I don’t understand how what EA does isn’t just a straight up crime. There has to be some kind of checks and balances that prevent a corporation from buying another profitable corporation and making it unprofitable on purpose almost immediately every single time.
nah, their sports titles still print money and Battlefield is huge. This round of layoffs is exactly what was coming as they were going to laser focus on the things that print money like the sports titles, apex legends and battlefield. Everything else is going to get the shit end of the stick.
My impression is that Bioware has had a leadership problems for years. Hearing about the development of Anthem and Veilguard, leadership refuses to make decisions or make them and then reverse them repeatedly. It's only when EA stepped on, for both games, that they crunched and got something playable put together. With Veilguard there was EA meddling as well.
Bioware had great writers, but they never grew past the "Bioware magic" culture, and it sank them.
The ME team all got moved over to Veilguard to finish it. Then, when it disappointed in sales, EA laid off a ton of the studio. There was only 50 people left.
It's been in "early development" for years and years. Multiple N7 Days has come and gone and for the past few years it's sounded like they were only just getting started on figuring out what it was going to be. It's absolutely insane how much time they've spent on what now amounts to nothing.
For fuck's sake. How ignominious. Well, not like we didn't see it coming.
My heart goes out to the few devs who were still there and suffering under EA, I hope they go on to do great stuff elsewhere.
Thank you to everyone who ever worked at Bioware. Mass Effect 4 would've just been an extra gift if it had turned out well - the trilogy is permanently seared into my soul at this point, and it'll continue to mean a lot to me. Mine and a lot of other's annual playthroughs will carry on.
Mass Effect to me is the trilogy and I love Mass Effect. I really liked the first three Dragon Age's, Origins and 2 are really special games. And I've somehow never got more than five hours into KOTOR, but one day I'll beat it and I'll bet you anything I'll love that too.
Hey, I even liked Veilguard for the most part. Shoot me. Sad fucking day guys. But we'll always have the trilogy.
EA buying out Bioware was the moment they died. It was a terminal cancer diagnosis that simply was a matter of time.
We are lucky they finished trilogy. Hopefully they ME series cools off for a bit and then we can see small group get the rights and treat it like the passion project it deserves. See you in 2040.
Bioware was a shell of it's former self but it still hurts to finally see it come to an end. I know barely any of the original developers are there anymore but thank you Bioware for giving me some of the most incredible gaming experiences of my life.
Where was this posted? I don’t see anything on their official website. Also fuck EA, they could have at least try to sell them or let the studio go independent
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u/jlarz56 7h ago
Sad day to be a Mass Effect fan