Mass Effect 5 won’t have ‘support from the full studio,’ as BioWare restructures

It’s been a hot minute since we’ve had a new Mass Effect release, not including the Legendary Edition that came out in 2021. There is a follow-up in development, but a recꦓent post suggests the studio may be downsizing, or is at least restructuring.

According to – the current General Manager at BioWare – the next entry in Mass Effect will be handled by a “core team” going forward. It seems as though developers who worked on Dragon Age: The Vailguard are being moved over to the new project.

This information follows an announcement from August 2023 that said the company would be “changing how we build games to meet the needs of our upcoming projects and hold ourselves to the highest quality standards.”

Carefully chosen language

McCay goes on to say that BioWare is “taking this opportunity between full development cycles to reimagine” how the team works. As such, the upcoming Mass Effect game doesn’t require support from “the full studio.”

Do note that at no point does the blog post say that BioWare is actually initiating layoffs or terminating roles 𓆏at the company. However, the language employedܫ does seem to skirt around this. In fact, a report from , some people at the company have been relocated to other roles.

This also seems to include those who worked on the recent Dragon Age game. The report claims that “team members are also seeing their roles terminated” while also being offered new jobs internally. Given this, it does sound like BioWare is indeed restructuring in a way that will affect those who are already working at the studio.

As for the new Mass Effect, we don’t have much information to go off at this stage. At the time it was announced a few years ago, it was in the early stages of development, but McCay’s post suggests the project is about to become the focus of BioWare.