Fuck EA - A Requiem for BioWare
For those of you who are unaware, I am a huge Mass Effect fan. Alongside two mainstays of our site, Brock (Organoid Zero) and Josh (The Director), I have played and adored the franchise since its inception, back when the first game was, for all intents and purposes, an Xbox 360 exclusive. It was not my first rodeo with the developers behind the game, a studio called BioWare. Based in Canada and founded by two actual medical doctors, Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka, BioWare had been responsible for some of the greatest '90s-era PC RPGs, like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. Later, they'd do exemplary work on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, and Dragon Age.
KOTOR was indeed a classic.
But the one that stuck with me was always Mass Effect.
You see, I'm a sucker for a good space opera. "Space is the place," the old Toonami promo emblazoned on our TV screens, and they were right. It's the silence of it. The impending, omnipresent darkness punctured only by the dying light of a million stars. Outer space is simultaneously fascinating, utterly horrifying, and resplendent in its sheer magnitude.
Like staring into the void.
Mass Effect captured all of that. It made the vast, unyielding, unknowable expanse of space tangible. It showed the possibilities of life outside Earth, displaying a future where aliens and humans had first contact, and indeed, their first conflict. And outside of that initial war, it showed a galaxy where humans and aliens could find common ground, work together… maybe even fall in love.
To me, Mass Effect was home. Not just an escape from the doldrums of day to day life, but home in a very real sense. The companions you met on the journey through the original trilogy felt like friends. Your character, Shepard, had conversations with them. Built relationships and forged bonds with them. Romanced them. And to the shock of Fox News, yes, had a rather awkward sex scene with them. Shocking that a video game would actually attempt to depict choice and consequence and gods forbid, love and romance and sex! Egads! Heavens forfend! Won't somebody please think of the children???
By the way, that last bit was sarcasm, dear reader.
But I digress.
The point I'm making is that Mass Effect was a great trilogy. I realize that some may dismiss the follow up game in the franchise, Mass Effect Andromeda, and classify it as a misfire, but I think that's selling it short. Nothing was ever going to live up to the original games, and even they had a controversial ending in ME3, to put it mildly. Andromeda had huge shoes to fill, and what it attempted to do was admirable. I liked the story of a group of humans and aliens desperately carving out lives for themselves in an unfamiliar galaxy. Some of the execution, though, in terms of the dialogue and storytelling, was a bit.. unexpectedly hilarious.
So, yeah, BioWare wasn't perfect. They had missteps, not the least of which was their excursion into live service development, Anthem. Like Andromeda, Anthem had tons of potential, particularly in its mechanics and gameplay. Players took control of a human known as a Freelancer, and utilized their Javelin (i.e. a cool as hell mech suit) to explore the game's world by flying around like Iron Man, engaging enemies, and using class-based abilities. Co-op was heavily encouraged, and the combat systems built upon those established in the Mass Effect series.
Sounds good, right? And honestly, I enjoyed the game a lot, but it could have been so much more. When EA shifted the game to a live service model, everything fell apart. Due to a combination of factors, like a lackluster story, a dearth of in-game events and rewards to keep players coming back, no offline mode, and a crowded marketplace led by looter-shooters like Destiny, Anthem faced a dwindling player base and eventually was permanently shut down in January 2026.
While Anthem turned out to be a negative mark on BioWare's record, I still found it fun, and I didn't mind the multiplayer aspect of the title, which was reminiscent of Mass Effect 3's celebrated horde mode. Learning that EA pushed Anthem into a live service model prior to release gave me pause and certainly didn't line up with many players' expectations of a new action franchise with RPG-infused character and build progression. For many, the transition didn't work, and a chunk of BioWare's previously attained audience lost faith in the team, particularly in light of Andromeda's perceived weaknesses and the ongoing (at the time) reworking of Dragon Age: Veilguard's development.
Speaking of which, while I am far more partial to space-based science-fiction, Dragon Age as a series had built up a reputation I couldn't ignore, and while going back to play Dragon Age: Origins is a bit daunting, I remember playing Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition briefly and having a lot of fun with those games. I want to revisit the franchise now, but I played some of DA: Veilguard recently, and to me, it was another game that was judged too harshly. While some of the narrative is played out and a few story beats come across as contrived, I don't hate this game. Constructive criticism is warranted in some cases, as in any piece of art. Considering the difficulties faced during the development of the game, I'd argue that BioWare did the best they could with what they had, and the result was a solid game that could have been much better.
Since then, fans of BioWare who haven't given up on the studio and stuck with them through the last decade have been waiting for news regarding the development of the next installment in the Mass Effect series. On November 7, 2020, the studio released a teaser trailer featuring a familiar face from the original trilogy, and hinted at the fact that Shepard may have survived. Or, at least, a piece of their armor had. It was a great teaser, and it left us with many more questions than answers.
Sadly, we'll never find out the answer to that teaser's mysteries, or the identity of the strange, helmet-wearing character in the long, flowing N7 trenchcoat who was featured in the N7 Day 2023 trailer. We'll never find out what happens to the mass relays and if they were rebuilt, though concept art shared by longtime producer Mike Gamble on Twitter would suggest that they may have been. Or at least, that someone was working on it.
See that Geth wearing robes? Intriguing, no?
We'll never find out what Liara actually found on that snowy, Hoth-like planet featured in the 2020 teaser. We'll never discover what the Krogan civil war was really about. Was it the Genophage cure? Repopulation of the Krogan-controlled worlds? Was it a conflict between a more peaceful group and the more traditionalist sect of Krogan? What of the Andromeda Initiative? Had they somehow managed to find a method to travel back to the Milky Way? Would we as players meet them? Would the narrative have been split between Liara and Ryder? Would we have played as Liara? Why were the Geth wearing clothing in the teaser image featuring the masked N7?
Did Shepard somehow, some way, survive?
So many questions. No answers.
Update: As I was editing this piece, a new, authentic (as confirmed by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier) game trailer for a project entitled Mass Effect: Universe was leaked to the public by someone purported to be a former BioWare employee. I’m embedding the trailer below, without further comment, except to say that I’m saddened that we were robbed of the experience of playing this game. Thank you to the programmers and artists and team members who worked so diligently on this final bit of Mass Effect media.
As I write this, it's 16 days before N7 Day 2026. I feel sad, knowing that we were so close to learning something, anything, new about this next iteration in the franchise. I feel sad for the people, about 50 in total, losing their jobs as they fought tooth and nail to keep their studio, and this dream, alive. I feel angry because a stupid private equity buyout resulted in thievery. They stole joy from us, and they took the team's jobs away from them, all in the name of money and profit and debt consolidation. After, of course, the executives from Electronic Arts bragged about how their company is the biggest in the world.
Then they culled their remaining employees, with the promise of greater workloads and more crunch time to those left standing.
Without BioWare, let's take a look at what's left: sports games like Madden and EA Sports Football Club (formerly FIFA), which is, at its core, an engine for in-game microtransactions, Apex Legends and its own DLC passes and microtransactions, the next Star Wars Jedi game, some kind of Iron Man game, the next iteration of the Sims and its microtransactions, whatever remains of Skate, which will probably include some sort of microtransaction-driven monetization... Notice a theme emerging?
With the gutting of so many studios over the past few months, one thing is clear: the video game industry is eating itself. Creativity is being shattered while corporate greed is growing. Consolidation occurs unchecked while people lose their livelihoods. AI usage continues to proceed unabated. Voices are silenced. Private equity firms swallow up studios and spit them out after having ravaged their corpses for user data and IP licenses.
And while we're on the topic, don't tell me that this isn't political. When you see billions of dollars in funding from a foreign entity backed by private equity firms buying up a distinctly (for better or worse) American brand, supported by a corrupt group of oligarchs who also come from big money... and said foreign entity additionally criminalizes LGBTQIA+ people... and they proceed to shut down a developer who makes games that depict and support LGBTQIA+ characters and players, and said players often describe such games and universes as safe spaces for them...
Don't you dare say this isn't political.
I got a newsflash for you: Everything is political.
You want to know why I used profanity in this article's title? That's why. Because people with entirely too much money think they own us all. Because executives and board members and CEOs and billionaires think they control us. Because the rich get richer and the poor are expected to just suffer and die and thank the rich for the opportunity to do so as they breathe their final, ragged breaths.
Fuck that bullshit.
We're Renegades, motherfuckers. We stand and we say no.
Renegade symbol on the left, Paragon symbol on the right. Did you know that this was the inspiration behind our site name?
We laugh in the face of that endless void.
Game developers, I have one word for you: unionize. Do it, because they don't see you or any of us as individuals anymore. They see us as walking canvas bags full of money. They don't see us as living, breathing human beings who deserve a fair living wage in a world where they control the vast majority of the world’s wealth. They see us as tools to be used and discarded at their whims. And for what? More money. Copious, endless amounts of stupid green paper bills.
I sincerely hope that all of this bullshit results in more devs speaking up and forming unions, because that's what it has come to.
Just as Mass Effect was a galactic fight for survival, so too is this moment a fight for us as a community and as a society. The corruption we face in the world is as destructive as the Reapers, and perhaps as inevitable, given the systems in place which gave rise to it.
Stand. Fight.
As Shepard, Liara, Garrus, Tali, Wrex, Thane, Kasumi, Grunt, Ashley, Kaidan, James, Jacob, Miranda, Jack, EDI, Joker, Legion, Zaeed, Samara, Mordin, Ryder, Cora, Drack, Vetra, Liam, and Peebee would have.
That's the real Mass Effect, my friends. *Keelah Se'lai.*
Afterword: Well, folks, I needed to rant my head off because after this summer's upheaval with Destiny (which, thankfully, was resurrected) and Halo (my third gaming home), I'm just sick of seeing my favorite gaming franchises and studios getting destroyed in the name of profits. I'm glad that games like Cyberpunk 2077, Exodus, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, and Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic exist to carry the torch left by Mass Effect. I’m also happy to see that apparently the Amazon-produced TV series is still a go, though how that turns out is anyone’s guess. I'm also heartened to see my fellow Guardians come to the aid of those who loved BioWare, too.
In the face of great evil, lift each other up. That's the point, I think.
Best wishes to those who have lost their jobs, and hope for a better future. And of course, all the gratitude my broken heart can muster to those who have shaped these beautiful worlds we all share.
Hello, everyone! Neoplasmic here with a very different, more personal take on the end of Destiny 2, Sony’s decision to end physical media production, and the importance of a furry, four-legged companion through it all.