Word on the street is that EA (Electronic Arts) decided to shut down BioWare so it could pour its money into a new Star Wars title instead.
According to trusted video game journalist Jason Schreier, EA felt it could only realistically bankroll one massive project. In the end, Star Wars Battlefront 3 got the nod over the next Mass Effect simply because management viewed it as less of a gamble.
He reports that while both projects were tipped to cost hundreds of millions to produce, Battlefront 3 was deemed the safer bet, even though work on it had not actually started yet.
BioWare certainly did not help its own case with a string of commercial misses like Anthem, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. On top of those missteps, internal office politics also appear to have eroded the studio’s standing with high-level executives.
The news of BioWare pulling the plug last month sent shockwaves through the global gaming community. Heartbroken fans are now scrambling to gather signatures in a petition in a desperate attempt to rescue the next Mass Effect game from being permanently binned. At the time of writing this article, the petition has garnered more than 295,000 signatures.