Amid changes at BioWare as the studio shifts its focus to Mass Effect 5, while shuffling some devs to other EA studios and reportedly laying some off, the project director of the upcoming sci-fi RPG has clarified that the game is "still in pre-production."
Last week, BioWare general manager Gary McKay said that considering Mass Effect 5's current "stage of development," the team doesn't "require support from the full studio," noting that "many colleagues" had been matched up with other EA teams with open roles. In a statement sent to IGN, a BioWare spokesperson confirmed that with Dragon Age: The Veilguard now shipped, "the studio's full focus is Mass Effect." The spokesperson didn't provide comment about the reported layoffs, however – Bloomberg has since claimed that less than 100 employees are left at BioWare.
In a Twitter thread responding to this news, the project director of the upcoming Mass Effect game, Michael Gamble, has clarified what stage of development the RPG is currently at and it sounds like it's still quite a ways off being completed. "As the notes have said, we are still in pre-production," Gamble writes.
- EA says Mass Effect 5 is now BioWare's "full focus" as it shuffles devs to other studios, with some reportedly facing layoffs following Dragon Age: The Veilguard's underperformance
- Mass Effect 5 is BioWare's only big project after Dragon Age: The Veilguard, studio veteran predicts, but "isn't ready to suddenly have a team of 250, 300 people"
as the notes have said, we are still in pre production.February 2, 2025
Considering how little we know about the game, it makes sense. Hell, we still don't know if it'll pull a Witcher 4 or Switch 2 and be given the "unofficial" name that everyone's been using for it – Mass Effect 5 – or be called something else entirely.
As for the current team size, this lines up with comments made by former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah, who claimed in a video after The Veilguard's release that Mass Effect 5 "isn't ready to suddenly have a team of 250, 300 people working on it." In the same video, he said that he believed that since the project wasn't "up and running at full speed" yet, "there is a need to find other work for them within the rest of the EA organization while the Mass Effect team figures out what Mass Effect is going to be, figures out the structure, and then gets ready to ramp up to a much bigger team size."
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