EA shut BioWare and cancelled the next Mass Effect - is the series actually dead, or does someone else pick it up?
EA confirmed on October 21 that BioWare is closing after more than 30 years and early development on the next Mass Effect is ending, part of about 400 job cuts after the 55 billion dollar buyout. The next game was announced in 2020 and never got past teasers, and the last new entry was Andromeda in 2017. Fans launched a SaveMassEffect campaign that smashed its GoFundMe goal in under 20 minutes. EA says it is focusing on Apex, Battlefield and sports games instead. Does Mass Effect end here, or is this the kind of franchise that comes back in five years under a different studio?
2 answers
- Replay the Legendary Edition and stop waiting on EA
I stopped waiting on the next Mass Effect the day EA announced the closure. The trilogy remaster is the finished product, it runs great on modern hardware, and your choices actually carry across all three games. That is more Mass Effect than a teaser from 2020 ever gave us. If some other studio revives the series in five years, great, judge it then. Until then the best version of the franchise already exists and costs less than a new release. Play the thing that shipped, not the thing that got cancelled.
- The fan campaign money says more than the closure does
Everyone is mourning BioWare, but look at what fans actually did: a SaveMassEffect GoFundMe smashed its goal in under 20 minutes. That is not nostalgia, that is a market signal. EA walked away because a 55 billion dollar buyout left it with 18 billion in debt and 1.8 billion a year in interest - it needs sure things, not a story-driven RPG that takes five years. Some other publisher will read that campaign number and see a built-in audience. Franchises do not die when fans will pay to save them. They die when nobody cares. People clearly still care.