THE CRUNCH
EA has announced the closure of BioWare, the studio behind a 30-year run of choice-driven role-playing games, cancelling its forthcoming Mass Effect game in the process. More than 400 people are losing their jobs. Writing in the Guardian, industry veteran Lucy James calls it a farewell to the maker of some of the best games of the 21st century, and says the world of RPGs feels smaller without the hope of another instalment in the much-loved sci-fi series.
The writing was arguably on the wall. EA has been saddled with $20bn of debt following a recent leveraged buyout involving Jared Kushner and the Saudi wealth fund, and BioWare had not released a critical or commercial hit in over a decade, despite a reputation for genre-defining RPGs such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age.
The cancelled game, reportedly titled Mass Effect: Universe according to a leaked trailer, had been announced back in 2020 but, despite some flashy teases, was still years away from release. The studio's legacy rests heavily on the original Mass Effect trilogy, released from 2007 to 2012, which followed Commander Shepard's fight against the Reapers, an ancient synthetic race that wipes out organic life every 50,000 years.
James's tribute highlights what made those games endure: meaningful choices that carried across all three games and shaped how Shepard and the galaxy's fate unfolded, wrapped around a crew of characters such as Garrus Vakarian and Dr Liara T'Soni. She ranks Mass Effect 2, with its iconic final mission, among her favourite games of all time.