Hey guys. My fellow saviors of the Milky Way, fellow Commanders Shepard. Shepaaaaaaaards, if you will.

I don’t gotta tell you how today’s news hit me hard, I’m sure you’re feelin it too. Mass Effect and Dragon Age were huge, integral parts of my childhood.

In honor of the BioWare that was and not necessarily the BioWare that came to be, I wanted to share my story of how I got into the series a little late. And also ask how you got into the series! And hopefully inspire another playthrough!

TL;DR This trilogy means a lot to me. I came in a little late, but it hooked me all the same. I’m starting a new playthrough and hopefully you will too!

How did you first discover this series? What’s your story?

I actually started with Mass Effect 2, after seeing that one guide to the suicide mission in a game magazine, but I had no idea who any of the characters were. I got that Shepard was a hero from before who died and was brought back to do more hero stuff, that was enough for high school me.

Tali, Archangel, Anderson, Wreave (because I got a default world state); the significance of seeing these characters was lost on little me. They would mention Saren and Sovereign, and I would have no idea what they were talking about. I didn’t really know what a Reaper even looked like until the final shot where they creep outta dark space. I met the Geth through Legion.

I was mostly into it because of the small, character-based stories it told. It reminded me of Star Wars, another great love, but it was darker, more noir, and pushed deeper into sci-fi concepts.

Anyway, ME3 comes out a few years later and I get it immediately. I can’t remember how far I got, and I don’t remember what inspired it, but I remember finally thinking that I was seriously missing something by not playing the first game. So I put ME3 down. I went back and played all the way from the start.

And this was 2012, long before the LE improved ME1’s combat mechanics and look. But even with all its flaws, I was still absolutely floored by the story! I played it side by side with my little brother, and I’ll always remember telling him about how I finally got to Saren and beat the game. He was like “you had to fight him? I just got him to shoot himself!” My jaw hit the floor!!! I was amazed that a game could have a branching path like that, even after playing ME2 already.

Plus getting to know Garrus, Tali, Liara, and Ashely as younger allies, meeting Wrex and making sure he lived, the Sovereign reveal, and alllll the world building that was packed in between. It’s seriously magical. Lightning in a bottle, in a different way that even the second game, even as peak as it is, wasn’t quite hitting.

So I finished 1, played 2 all the way through again, and THEN started 3 again with all allies intact. I got through 3 and was somewhat disappointed by the ending, sure, but was pretty pleased with all the other major climaxes that happen throughout. I remember really holding onto hope for a while that Indoctrination Theory was real and we’d get one more story, but that never happened.

And that’s the tale! I’ve been a fan of the trilogy ever since.
I play through it every two years or so, and I was actually in the middle of a playthrough earlier this year, but I am starting over! We’re taking it from the top! I’m starting a new playthrough today and you should too! What’s your build gonna be? I think I’ve tried everything but Engineer atp, but i haven’t played soldier since the first playthrough, so I’ll likely do that. They get time powers, after all.

TL;DR This trilogy means a lot to me. I came in a little late, but it hooked me all the same. I’m starting a new playthrough and hopefully you will too!

How did you first discover this series? What’s your story?

When my grandma got her last cardiac arrest, she expend the last 8 months in the ICU. Too weak to get out, but survived for too long.

When she died, we felt relief. Not sadness, when mourned while she was alive, cause it hurt to see her suffer. We wanted to remember her as she was.

That's what I feel about BioWare.

Me1 and dao are my favorite games of all time. But the company has been killing itself since then.

When complained about Andromeda and the Shit Writing, but veilguard made that looks like Shakespeare.

BioWare was not alive. It was a reanimated corpse finally put to rest.

Mass Effect was the only connection I had to my dad growing up
This place is a prison

There is still hope for more Mass Effect. Hopefully someone can pick up the IP.

I know BioWare hasn't been at its best in recent years, but the Mass Effect trilogy remains an experience that left a deep impression on me and even helped me a lot during some of my darkest moments from life

Mass Effect: Andromeda wasn’t quite on the same level, but I remained in love with that universe and was excited when it was announced that a new Mass Effect was in the works

Now, the studio is closed, and we know that everything has been canceled… Still, Mass Effect will always have a place in my heart, and I thank BioWare for everything

BioWare, I’m proud of you... 🥲🙏❤️

The Legendary Edition just means so much more now. Thank you Bioware. You made so many people's lives better

If EA NHL still exists, could the closure be both moral and financial?

I didn't grow up with BioWare, far from it actually. I grew up with the likes of COD, Battlefield, Gears of War, StarCraft, Diablo and Fallout. It wasn't until late 2023 that I really cared about Mass Effect. I didn't know much about it besides the hot blue alien women and that many people considered it one of the greatest trilogies of all time. So, as a freshman in college, I finally played it. I hesitate to say it changed my life, but the LE was the first game in literal years that I could not stop thinking about since the first time I played Fallout New Vegas. I became obsessed to put it bluntly. On both Xbox and PC, I probably have about 500 hours in the game. I love the series and I even liked Andromeda as well. So when I saw the news today, it gutted me because I was so excited to see what was going to happen next.

I want to believe that this isn't the end for Mass Effect, maybe not even a full end for BioWare. That maybe the remnants of BioWare can somehow be brought back together and continue their work or at the very least, someone can pick up the pieces and start over. I guess only time will tell...

To wrap this post up with a bow, I say this to the people at BioWare, the fans and the people who made this incredible series... Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Although I didn't grow up with your games, when I eventually got to them, a 20+ year old man was brought back to a time when he didn't have to worry about student loans, the economy and whether the world is going to spontaneously explode. Your game made me feel like a kid again and I guess at the end of the day, that is what games are for and Mass Effect was truly one of the best.

With Bioware closing, what gaming studio do you think could pick up the mantle and deliver a stellar game in the universe's we all know and love?

Bioware was founded in 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip.

And if a group of medics can build a legend, so can you,

once again.

\******************************************

It's a sad day. But upcoming games, new talents on the horizon. The hope remains.

Song :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CoE8rxstWg

Today, October 21, 2026, BioWare is shutting its doors, and I find myself grieving something that is difficult to explain to people who have never found refuge in a fictional world.

To some, Mass Effect was just a video game. A science-fiction adventure about aliens, spaceships, and saving the galaxy.

To me, Mass Effect was a lifeline.

I grew up in Iraq, in a world where violence, fear, and uncertainty were not distant concepts confined to television screens. They were part of everyday life. I experienced things no child should have to experience. I learned far too young how fragile life could be, how quickly everything familiar could disappear, and how little control an ordinary person could have over the world around them.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I discovered Mass Effect.

I cannot adequately describe what those games meant to that frightened kid in Iraq. For a few hours, I could leave behind a world that often felt hopeless and step into one where humanity had reached the stars. Where people from different worlds, different species, and different histories could overcome centuries of hatred to build something better.

Where the future was worth fighting for.

Perhaps the irony is that Mass Effect was itself a story about war. About extinction, displacement, prejudice, sacrifice, and the terrible things people do to one another. But unlike the conflict unfolding around me, this was a war in which I could make a difference. I could save people. I could bring enemies together. I could choose mercy when cruelty was easier.

I could believe that even against impossible odds, there was still a reason to keep going.

Then, in 2011, I left Iraq and came to America.

I was eighteen years old, thousands of miles from the only home I had ever known, trying to make sense of a new country and a new life while carrying memories of the old one that I could never entirely escape.

And then came Mass Effect 3.

I know its ending remains controversial. I know people have spent years debating the choices, the writing, and what Commander Shepard's journey ultimately meant.

But I will never be able to look at that game with the detachment of a critic.

Because when I played Mass Effect 3, I wasn't simply watching Shepard fight to save Earth. I was watching someone carry the unbearable weight of loss and responsibility, struggling to preserve a future that seemed increasingly impossible.

I understood that feeling.

I understood watching homes burn. I understood losing things you could never replace. I understood the exhaustion of surviving, and the terrible knowledge that surviving doesn't necessarily mean emerging unscathed.

But I also understood something else that Mass Effect taught me.

That what makes life worth living isn't the absence of suffering. It's the people we find, the bonds we forge, and the love we refuse to surrender in spite of it.

The Normandy became a kind of home to me when I was struggling to understand what home even meant anymore.

Garrus, Tali, Liara, Wrex, Mordin, Legion, Anderson, Joker, and all the others weren't simply well-written characters. They were familiar voices during periods of my life when I desperately needed something familiar.

Their friendships mattered to me. Their losses hurt me. Their victories gave me hope.

And Shepard's determination to keep moving forward, even as everything collapsed around them, helped me find some measure of that determination in myself.

There's a particular cruelty to surviving terrible things when you're young. The world expects you to grow up, move forward, and build a life, even when part of you is still trapped in the places you escaped.

Mass Effect gave me somewhere to put those feelings. It gave me stories through which I could understand grief, sacrifice, loyalty, and hope without having to explain my own experiences to anyone.

It reminded me that I was more than what had happened to me.

And when I say these games saved my life, I don't mean that as some exaggerated declaration of fandom.

I mean that there were moments in my life when the prospect of returning to that universe, of seeing those characters again, and of discovering what happened next gave me something to look forward to when looking forward was extraordinarily difficult.

That is what art can do.

And that is what BioWare did for me.

Today, a corporation can close a studio. It can cancel a sequel. It can decide that the stories which defined entire periods of our lives no longer justify the expense of telling them.

But it cannot undo what those stories accomplished.

Somewhere in the world, there was once a frightened Iraqi kid sitting in front of a screen, surrounded by a reality he couldn't control, finding comfort in the idea that somewhere beyond the stars, humanity might finally become something better.

That kid grew up. He crossed an ocean. He survived. He stumbled. He lost people he loved. He started over more times than he ever imagined he would have to.

And through all of it, he carried a little piece of the Normandy with him.

I wish I could tell the writers, artists, programmers, composers, and everyone else who helped create Mass Effect what they gave me.

Not merely entertainment. Not merely nostalgia.

They gave me companionship in loneliness. Courage in fear. Beauty in a world that could be unbearably ugly.

Most importantly, they gave me hope at a time when hope felt like the most unreasonable thing in the world.

So today, as BioWare closes its doors, I don't just want to mourn the end of a legendary studio.

I want to thank the people who worked there.

Because somewhere, many years ago, you helped a child living through a war imagine a future beyond it.

And years later, in a strange new country, you helped that same child, now an adult, find the strength to keep building that future.

You will probably never know his name. You will never know exactly what he experienced or how much your work meant to him.

But he's still here.

And in ways you may never fully understand, you helped make that possible.

Thank you, BioWare.

For the Normandy. For the crew. For the friendships. For the sacrifices. For the music. For the tears. For the impossible choices and the moments of extraordinary humanity.

Thank you for giving me a galaxy to escape into when the world around me was falling apart.

And thank you for reminding me that even in the darkest moments, there is still something worth fighting for.

The studio may be gone, but the stories are part of us now.

Keelah se'lai.

And one last time:

I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel.

Liquidation sale?

I hope you get a chance to run tests on seashells, Bioware. o7

Do you all think the servers are gonna go down?

Honestly I don’t think the current BioWare could have delivered something really groundbreaking. Maybe another studio will get the rights and do something interesting in the future. Either way I’m not devastated by the news.

Look if star citizen can pool together a fake studio off whales. Im sure we can save our beloved studio with mass support. How do we make this happen.

Edit#1: yo stop being pessimistic as hell and let's actually try to think about how we as a fan base of millions can move a rock. Movements are done by the people not by the individual in a suit.

Edit#2: This is a call to action. If you don't want to be apart of it then leave. I don't and im sure others don't need your negativity. I don't care if it fails the idea is to attempt something.

It is with great regret that a new addition to the Memorial has been added.

-Been a damn good ride

I'm so sad.