The next Mass Effect game was reportedly set 600 years after the original trilogy, with Liara T'Soni back in a major role.
Sci-fi gamers won't get to play it!
On October 21st, EA announced it was closing BioWare, the Canadian studio behind the series, and BioWare confirmed in its own social post that "BioWare is closing and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending." According to VGC, citing Bloomberg, the closure is part of roughly 400 layoffs across EA, including about 50 people at BioWare. The studio was founded in 1995 and bought by EA in 2007. The shutdown landed about two months after EA's $55 billion sale to a group led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, with Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, closed.
The project, known as Mass Effect: Universe, would have been the fifth game in the series. Former BioWare developers spoke anonymously to French outlet BFM Tech, and according to Kotaku's summary, that 600-year jump came with a new protagonist. Development had shifted from Frostbite to Unreal Engine with late 2028 as the target, and those accounts describe it as going well despite some missed deadlines.
It also sounds like it was built for the fans who replayed the trilogy a dozen times. Franchise technical director Romain Toutain said on a Twitch stream that the game would have taken every choice from the original trilogy into account, with player saves feeding different timelines, as Kotaku also reported.
BFM's sources say the pitch videos never won over EA's new leadership.
As GameFragger reported, the same BFM sources say a flag resembling the Pride flag was removed from a presentation for the game, and that detail is now in dispute. In Kotaku's summary, the team removed it for fear that it "could cause friction" with executive management. BFM reporter Sylvain Trinel, quoted by Kotaku, said the cut came "in anticipation of potential negative feedback given Electronic Arts' current shareholding structure," and that the goal was to get ahead of criticism from conservative executives.
TheGamer's account puts the call with the team itself. EA hadn't seen the footage yet, by that telling, and the developers cut the flag on their own because it "looked too much like a Pride flag" and "wasn't worth the risk."
Destructoid reported it differently. Working from a machine translation, it said BioWare was ordered to remove the flag because it was "too similar to the LGBTQIA+ one," with the order attributed to the new owners.
Kala Elizabeth, a freelance illustrator involved in the #SaveMassEffect campaign, said on X that ex-BioWare developers told her the game had no flags but kept its same-sex romances. The flag account rests on anonymous sources in a French-language report, and the English versions above come from different translations. Kotaku said it asked EA for comment; I haven't seen a statement from EA, BioWare or the PIF.
As for the franchise, Amazon's live-action Mass Effect series remains in development, according to sources within Prime Video speaking to IGN. BioWare said on N7 Day last year that the show tells a new story set after the trilogy. None of the closure coverage I've read says what EA plans to do with the games.
What do you think? Would you have played a Mass Effect set 600 years after Shepard, with Liara back in a major role?
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