Last week, sci-fi gaming fans were treated to both bad and good news. The bad news? BioWare has been shut down, resulting in the latest Mass Effect game being cancelled. The potential good news? EA is reportedly looking into developing a new Star Wars Battlefront, with DICE returning to develop. Turns out, these stories could be connected in a way that paints a sad picture for EA in light of its new management.
Not too long after BioWare was closed, a wealth of new information about the Mass Effect project the studio had in the works since at least 2020 hit the internet. The game would have reportedly been called Mass Effect: Universe, with former Technical Director Romain Toutain claiming that the plan was to allow players to use game saves from past entries to basically create their own parallel timeline following Mass Effect 3‘s galaxy-altering end. A demo trailer was also released, showing a spy and his crew embarking on a clandestine mission several hundred years after the original Mass Effect trilogy.
Mass Effect: Universe Was Reportedly Cancelled Because Of Star Wars Battlefront 3
Alas, Mass Effect: Universe was not to be, and it might be because EA wanted to focus its efforts on another beloved sci-fi franchise. According to a new report from Bloomberg (via IGN), the primary reason for Mass Effect: Universe‘s cancellation was budget issues brought on by Saudi Arabia’s $55 billion leveraged buyout, which has left the publisher $18 billion in debt. Bloomberg says that it would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce both Mass Effect: Universe and Star Wars Battlefront 3, and EA ultimately decided that Star Wars was a safer financial bet.
The kicker though? According to recent reports, Star Wars Battlefront 3 hasn’t even started development yet, while Mass Effect: Universe was presumably in the works for quite some time, judging from the level of polish in the leaked trailer. While I understand that Star Wars is the bigger franchise and naturally has greater drawing power, it still hurts to think that we may never return to the rich universe that BioWare crafted throughout the Mass Effect series.
BioWare’s closure and the resulting scrapping of Mass Effect: Universe has rallied fans to sign online petitions in hopes that another company will buy the franchise and continue where its original owners cannot, with one Twitter petition in particular getting nearly 300,000 signatures. However, it doesn’t seem like EA would be willing to part ways with it. On the plus side, the live-action Mass Effect TV series is still in production at Amazon, so we at least have that to look forward to for the time being.
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