BioWare Co-Founder Wants to Save Mass Effect and Has Reached Out to Original Developers

Trent Oster is exploring ways to fund a new Mass Effect and would like to bring the original BioWare developers back together. James Ohlen has also confirmed his interest in returning.

With BioWare shutting down and its upcoming Mass Effect canceled, another possibility has emerged for the series to return. This time, BioWare co-founder Trent Oster, who currently leads Beamdog, is interested in saving it. He has already started crunching the numbers on potential funding and would like to reunite the studio’s original creators.

Oster voiced his support for the #SaveMassEffect initiative on X and suggested he still sees room for a well-funded RPG studio capable of carrying on BioWare’s legacy. He also pointed to the high costs involved. In his view, players would expect a new Mass Effect to deliver AAA quality, which could mean a budget of more than $200 million at today’s development costs. However, he believes an experienced team and a carefully managed development process could deliver a quality game for less.

He has even started contacting former developers. His first choice was James Ohlen, who worked at BioWare for 22 years and was behind games such as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age: Origins. Ohlen responded positively to Oster’s public offer and confirmed that the chance to work on Dragon Age again would be a dream come true.

Oster is doing more than just making statements. Over the weekend, he wrote on X that he was working in Excel on various financial scenarios and had already gone through more than 30 versions. He also acknowledged that support from the Canadian government could be an option; the government has already received a fan petition calling for BioWare to be saved.

How the project would be funded remains an open question. Beamdog is a much smaller studio focused mainly on enhanced releases of older RPGs, and it doesn’t have enough funding of its own to develop a new Mass Effect. Oster would need a major investor or other partners to help him secure the rights to the franchise or a license from EA.

EA is likely to be the biggest obstacle. The company is shutting down BioWare, but it still owns the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises and has so far shown no willingness to sell them. Oster still has a long way to go, but at least the possibility of the original developers reuniting is beginning to take shape.

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