Fans Created Petitions to Save Dragon Age and Anthem

The closure of BioWare and the cancellation of Mass Effect 5, which were announced last week, have become one of the most talked-about stories of the year. Fans—particularly those of the sci-fi franchise—began actively promoting the idea of saving Mass Effect on social media, which generated quite a buzz.

Specifically, this led to the launch of a petition to save Mass Effect, which has already gathered nearly 300,000 signatures—it has also been supported by Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, the voices of Shepard's male and female versions in the trilogy. Similarly, some fans decided to set up similar petitions to “save” Dragon Age and Anthem—other BioWare projects.

The results, however, aren’t all that impressive. For instance, the petition to save Dragon Age garnered just over 3,500 signatures, while the one for Anthem garnered just over 6,000. Nevertheless, it’s unlikely that EA will change its strategy. A new Bloomberg report by Jason Schreier revealed the company has decided to focus on Star Wars Battlefront 3 instead of continuing development of Mass Effect 5. The game was also confirmed last week; DICE and Respawn Entertainment are in charge of the development.

Speaking a little more about Dragon Age, according to former BioWare producer Mark Darrah, the franchise could theoretically still be revived; however, as he noted in an interview, there are no longer any people at EA who know how to manage the game series. According to Darrah, in order to revive it, development should begin on remasters of the older games, specifically Dragon Age: Origins, which often runs into issues on older PCs.