BioWare’s Death Might Actually Be a Good Thing

BioWare is dead. The next Mass Effect is canceled. Let me be clear: I’m not celebrating this. Especially after watching the leaked trailer for the next game. That trailer was shot in-engine. Not made with CGI. Mass Effect has been a part of my life for 16 years.

It’s a sad day for the video game industry.

That said, after the shock of the announcement wore off, a different thought has crept into my mind: perhaps it’s a good thing. The BioWare that made Veilguard and Anthem is not the same BioWare that made the original trilogies for Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

And it starts with understanding what this studio shutting down actually means.

The Separation of IP and Studio

EA shut down BioWare and canceled the next Mass Effect as part of a massive layoff wave that cut about 400 people. EA was recently acquired in a $55 billion leveraged buyout led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, putting around $18 billion of debt on EA’s books.

That puts the shutdown in a different perspective: EA will keep cutting costs and finding opportunities to pay off this debt. And while BioWare has closed, EA still owns the Mass Effect IP. And that’s a property they can theoretically sell, too.

Other RPG studios with proven track records can take care of the Mass Effect IP and give it the love and respect it deserves. Studios like Larian, Owlcat, and CD Projekt RED. Those studios made games with love, and nobody is perfect, but they show that great RPGs can still be made outside BioWare's relationship with EA.

I’m not saying one of these studios is about to buy Mass Effect. But BioWare closing does break an assumption we’ve had for years: that Mass Effect and BioWare have to remain inseparable.

The Relationship Wasn’t Working Anymore

If we look back objectively on any of the games BioWare has put out over the last decade, we can see a trend with their reception: slight suspicion. And we have come to accept that as fact. But that’s not how it should be.

Andromeda in 2017 technically spent five years in development, but post-release reporting found that most of the game we actually played was built in roughly the final 18 months. There were re-scopes, leadership changes, technological problems, and brutal crunch. Remember the whole “my face is tired” meme? Andromeda was mocked for not being ready.

I am not going to say EA is the only one responsible for this outcome. BioWare clearly had its own internal problems, but something there didn’t work.

Anthem was a disaster. We all agree. I don’t even need to talk about it.

And then we reach Mass Effect Legendary Edition in 2021. It modernized the original trilogy. It included almost all the DLC and remastered the game's assets, so it looked better. I liked it, and I still play it. It was the one thing that went pretty well for BioWare in the last decade.

And think about that for a second: BioWare’s biggest unambiguous win of the last decade was repackaging the games made by the old BioWare.

And then we reach The Veilguard. We can all agree Veilguard had a troubled release. I played it to 100% completion, and while I didn’t hate it, I had many questions. For example, why can’t I go to the south? It’s clear it was possible when Harding tells you she takes Emmrich to visit Ferelden. What? I want to visit Ferelden too!

Or there was the entire debacle with Taash and their nonbinary questline. I didn’t mind it too much, and Taash being nonbinary itself wasn’t really my issue. But I still think it’s a little weird that so much of an entire companion questline in a massive fantasy RPG was dedicated to a companion discovering and discussing their gender identity.

Video games often cut to black during romantic scenes, but somehow going so deeply into something this personal and specific was considered perfectly fine as a major companion storyline. Maybe visibility would have been better served through side quests or as part of a broader companion story, rather than becoming such a large part of Taash’s arc. Those companion quests and conversations were clipped and widely mocked online. Was it worth it to reach a relatively small subset of gamers who felt seen by those quests? I didn’t mind it, but if I were in BioWare’s shoes, I would have chosen a different path to show that visibility.

Regardless of how anyone feels about that storyline, Veilguard had a much bigger problem: EA later reported that the game reached around 1.5 million players during the quarter, nearly 50% below the company’s expectations.

All of that puts us in a position where BioWare has not published a new RPG that became an undisputed hit with its audience in over a decade. Legendary Edition was the exception, and that was a remaster of the games that made us love BioWare in the first place.

The Writing Was On The Wall

Ever since the EA acquisition deal was finalized, I had a feeling this was coming. But now that it’s here, I feel like I lost a friend.

Mass Effect games were my most-played games ever. The leaked trailer just made it hit so much worse.

While BioWare had its own problems over the years, I do still think a new Mass Effect game under a new owner could be a great resolution. If you work at a game studio and you’re reading this, imagine gaining the most loyal fandom you’ll ever get. We love these characters and that world so deeply that we will follow them anywhere.

And maybe that’s what I’ve actually been mourning. Not the BioWare that existed yesterday, but the BioWare that existed when I first stepped onto the Normandy sixteen years ago. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing anymore.

Closing the studio doesn’t erase those games. But it might finally separate the worlds BioWare created from a company that no longer knew what to do with them.

Thanks For Reading

If you’re a nerdy adult like me, this probably hit you too. I know many nerds like me who grew up with Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Please, feel free to comment or hit reply and tell me how you’re feeling right now. We need to be there for each other.

BioWare is dead, but Mass Effect doesn’t have to die with it.

Keelah Se’lai,
Oren