BioWare Officially Cancels 4v1 Action RPG Shadow Realms

BioWare Austin's episodic, 4v1 multiplayer action RPG, Shadow Realms, has been laid to rest so the company can focus on other projects.

Last month, we mentioned that Shadow Realms was possibly being rebooted. Unfortunately, BioWare has stepped forward to officially announce its cancellation of the project entirely. It's possible that the assets gained from Shadow Realms' development could be allocated to a different project, as it would be a big loss to see everything scrapped. Shadow Realms was originally intended to be an episodic 4v1 adventure, which sounded a lot like Dragon Age: Inquisition's multiplayer gameplay. Scuttlebutt hinted that BioWare was possibly rebooting the game's development to give it a full story campaign and lose its episodic format, but it looks like the company went with Plan B and scrapped it all.

Here's an official statement from BioWare Austin's General Manager:

Today I’m sharing some important news about Shadow Realms and our BioWare Austin studio.

We’ve made the decision to not move forward with development of Shadow Realms. We fully recognize that this news is disappointing to some of our fans, so I want to explain more behind this decision.

While the team did amazing work on the game concept and we got lots of great feedback from our fans at events and through other game testing, right now there are other projects for the team to work on within the BioWare studios for the coming year and beyond. We’ve got an incredibly talented team here at the Austin studio, and they are excited and already deep on new projects within the BioWare family, ones that will make some great BioWare games even better.

These include additional ongoing enhancements to the award-winning Dragon Age: Inquisition, as well as the next game in the Mass Effect series and other new IP.

But the biggest focus for our team in BioWare Austin will be on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. As every Star Wars™ fan knows, this is a massive year in the Star Wars universe. We have some great plans for expanding this epic game this year, and look forward to sharing the news about those plans with our players in the coming weeks.

For all the people that registered for the Shadow Realms Closed Alpha, we’re working on a way to say thank-you for signing up. To all those players that gave us feedback at Gamescom and PAX, and those that shared their thoughts and impressions in the past months, we thank you for being part of the conversation.

Jeff Hickman

General Manager, BioWare Austin

Before leaving BioWare this past August, Mass Effect trilogy lead Casey Hudson mentioned that BioWare Edmonton is working on a new IP. We also know this new project is not the fourth Mass Effect title, but something new entirely. While the cancellation of Shadow Realms is a setback, we can't wait to hear about this new project.