When Electronic Arts confirmed this week that it was closing BioWare, the news landed as a double blow. The studio behind Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age was gone. So was the next Mass Effect, a game many fans had been waiting for since Andromeda disappointed in 2017. Bloomberg reported that around 400 jobs would go across EA as the publisher reshapes itself after its record-breaking private equity buyout.
The reaction has been closer to mourning than the usual industry shrug. A fan petition passed 50,000 signatures within days. Larian's chief executive, Swen Vincke, said BioWare had "led the way in making RPGs big". Then came a glimpse of what might have been. Dantics, a YouTuber who sat on BioWare's external Mass Effect Council, described a game set more than 600 years after the Reaper War. The galaxy would have been split into three rival blocs, Liara would have returned as an Asari Matriarch, and missions would have offered "Hitman-style freedom". IGN says it verified the details
It sounds like a studio trying to remember who it was. Yet the more revealing story is how few of the people who defined BioWare were still there to do the remembering.
Casey Hudson directed Knights of the Old Republic and the original Mass Effect trilogy. On the day of the announcement, he put it plainly: "Its legacy will live on through those who were part of it and continue to create games through a passion for unforgettable stories, worlds and characters." It read like a eulogy, but it was also a statement of fact.
Hudson left BioWare in 2014, returned as general manager in 2017 and left again in 2020 after Anthem's troubled launch. His new outfit, Arcanaut Studios, is making Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic. The game was unveiled at The Game Awards last December, and Hudson has called it a spiritual successor to Knights of the Old Republic. His team is stacked with former BioWare developers. There is no release date yet.
Closer to arrival is Exodus, from Archetype Entertainment. James Ohlen, Chad Robertson and Drew Karpyshyn founded the studio in 2019. Ohlen was lead designer on Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic; Karpyshyn was lead writer on the first Mass Effect.
Their science-fiction RPG, published by Wizards of the Coast, is due on 7 April 2027. Its story is built around time dilation: years can pass for the people you leave behind while you travel between the stars. It is, in all but name, the kind of space opera BioWare stopped making.
BioWare's influence has long spread beyond its own alumni. CD Projekt built the first Witcher on Aurora, the BioWare engine behind Neverwinter Nights. This week its joint chief executive, Michał Nowakowski, paid tribute to the help BioWare gave in those early days.
Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 is the sequel to BioWare's own series, and its companion-driven drama and romances follow the template BioWare refined. Owlcat Games, best known for Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, is making its first action RPG, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. Its dialogue choices and squad combat openly borrow from Mass Effect, and Steam lists it for the second quarter of 2027.
None of this softens the closure. Hundreds of people have lost their jobs, and EA still owns the Mass Effect and Dragon Age names, worlds and characters. Whatever the alumni make next, they cannot bring back Commander Shepard or Thedas.
But it does change how we should think about what has been lost. A publisher can own a logo and a back catalogue. It cannot own the instinct for writing a companion you would follow into a suicide mission, or the craft of making a choice in hour three come back to haunt you in hour 60. That knowledge left BioWare one resignation at a time, and it settled in studios across North America and Europe.
The caveat is obvious: pedigree is no guarantee. Many talented, experienced people worked on Anthem too. Exodus and Fate of the Old Republic still have to prove themselves.
Still, BioWare's legacy was never going to be measured by the name on the door. The real test is whether the games its people make next are good enough to stop us missing it.