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Sid Meier's name hangs over the franchise, but crafting the ultimate turn-based strategy franchise took a village Forty-four years ago, Sid Meier, a computer programmer, and Bruce Shelley, a military pilot, met in Las Vegas to discuss a potential partnership in the video-game business. They tested their wits in a game of Atari’s flight simulator, Red Baron, and when Meier's video game knowledge bested Stealey's real-world flight experience, the two knew exactly what kind of game their nascent studio would specialize in.

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Publisher Electronic Arts recently slashed 400 roles across its company , which resulted in the shuttering of legendary RPG studio BioWare . But also impacted by the layoffs was Skate developer Full…

BioWare was shut down yesterday by EA, bringing a sudden end to a studio whose legacy of legendary role-playing games stretches back nearly 30 years. This meant that the studio’s Mass Effect project, being developed by a relative skeleton crew after a downsizing in January of 2025, was canceled, and fans likely won’t get the chance to return to the beloved science-fiction universe unless EA sells the IP. However, we got a new look at what the team was working on thanks to a leaked trailer, revealing that the game was going to be called Mass Effect: Universe. The trailer is short, but there’s a lot to extrapolate in the two minutes we see. We can also make some educated guesses based on the years of teases BioWare put out before EA shuttered the studio. So let’s try to make heads or tails of it all. Where is this bar? © BioWare The trailer starts with an outside shot of a bar, and we can see a giant skyscraper outside that doesn’t look quite like anything we’ve seen before. It perhaps most closely resembles architecture seen in London after it gets rebuilt post-war in Mass Effect 3’s Extended Cut. There’s a pretty big mix of alien races here.

​The writing may have been on the wall, but that didn’t make the news any easier to stomach. On Wednesday, Electronic Arts shut down BioWare, one of the most storied video game studios around. It was known for developing landmark fantasy and science-fiction RPGs throughout its 30 years of operation. Its remaining employees were laid off as part of around 400 job cuts at EA. The next Mass Effect, colloquially called Mass Effect 5, was canceled. It’s an unceremonious end to a studio that was once at the forefront of choice-based, narrative-focused RPGs. The hundreds of employees who worked on its games over the years brought whole galaxies to life, filling them with beloved characters. Most importantly, BioWare series like Mass Effect and Dragon Age created spaces for players to feel represented and included. It’s not a stretch to say these games changed, or even saved, lives. BioWare’s games are art, and the power that art can have on an individual cannot be quantified. Of course, studios aren’t monoliths; dozens or hundreds of talented people are behind any name on the door.