BioWare, the video game studio behind sci-fi epic Mass Effect and fantasy saga Dragon Age, has been closed down. The Canadian developer specialising in role-playing games was founded in 1995 and found millions of fans with its complex, branching narratives. Its last two releases, however, did not meet sales expectations, and parent company Electronic Arts (EA) announced it had decided to close the studio as it cut 400 jobs across the business. In its own statement, BioWare, which was working on a new Mass Effect game, thanked players for being the most important part of the story during its 31-year history. The developer's first big taste of success came in 1998 when it released role-playing game Baldur's Gate, based on Dungeons and Dragons rules.

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"Anthem was designed to be an online-only title so once the servers go offline, the game will no longer be playable," BioWare wrote in the announcement. On August 15, the game will disappear from EA Play's playlist. Right now, players can't buy in-game currency, but they will be able to spend what they have until servers are offline. Developers at BioWare who have been working on Anthem will not be laid off as a result of the game's end. News of the game's shutdown comes as the industry, already going through an upheaval, faces increased pressure from players to create "end of life" plans for service games.

A new month is almost upon us, which means Sony is about to refresh the lineup of games that all PlayStation Plus members can claim and keep in their collection as long as they maintain their subscription. Between March 4 and March 31, you'll be able to snag Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Sonic Colors: Ultimate and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. Dragon Age: The Veilguard (PS5) is the clear headliner this time around. Fans had to wait a decade between new installments in BioWare's series, partly because the studio rebooted its work on the latest title several times. Veilguard, an action RPG, is a direct sequel to 2014's Dragon Age Inquisition.

Mass Effect is some of the best science fiction ever made. That may sound like a grandiose comment, but it's true. As a trilogy, the original games from 2007-2013 effortlessly plucked the most cerebral ideas from the sci-fi genre and slotted them into a memorable military role-playing game that had players invested from beginning to controversial end. Whether you prefer the hopeful, optimistic outlook of Asimov, the dark and reflective commentary of Shelley, the accessible thought experiments of Star Trek, or the arch melodrama of Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect has it all. The trilogy is as happy grazing on the western-inspired tropes of Star Wars as the "hard" sci-fi of Iain M Banks, blending all its moods and micro-stories into a compelling, believable galaxy that somehow walks a line between breathless optimism and suffocating bleakness.

Back in 2013, having bought the series from Eidos, Square Enix released a reboot of the hit 1990s action game Tomb Raider starring a significantly less objectified Lara Croft. I loved that game, despite a quasi-assault scene near the beginning that I would later come to view as a bit icky, and I wasn't the only one – it was extremely well received, selling 3.4m copies in its first month alone. Then Square Enix came out and called it a disappointment. Sales did not meet the publisher's expectations, apparently, which raises the question: what were the expectations? Was it supposed to sell 5m in one month?

Baldur's Gate 3 is a game about making choices. Encounter an imposing, demonic creature in the depths of a cavernous underground temple and, depending on how the player has created their character, the monster may be convinced to kill off its hellish accompanying soldiers and even banish itself back to the inferno. The enemy might also be defeated more conventionally, with slashes from a sword and blasts of electricity, knocking over barrels of grease and setting the battlefield on fire. Find the player character tasked with retrieving an important item locked away in a well-guarded room and it's possible to sneak in to retrieve it, perhaps lie effectively enough to be granted entry, or, once again, simply turn everything surrounding that protected room into a bloodbath. The Baldur's Gate series began in 1998, created by BioWare, the studio that would go on to make popular role-playing series Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

"A scripter was convinced that it would make the scene complete if you could be turned into a wheel of cheese," Larian Studios' lead systems designer Nick Pechenin tells me. The main story of Baldur's Gate 3 is about an invasion of tentacle-mouthed creatures that wouldn't look out of place in one of HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu horror stories, so a sidequest where a disgruntled wizard transforms you into cheese may seem out of place. But moments like this encapsulate why Larian is the game developer that comes closest to capturing the anarchic freedom of real-world sessions of Dungeons & Dragons. More than 20 years ago, before Mass Effect and Dragon Age, before even Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, much-loved developer BioWare made its name with Baldur's Gate and its sequel. "When the original games came out, they were the bleeding edge of what was possible technologically, visually, and story-wise," says Pechenin.

Bioware's quality assurance testers working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf have voted to form the first unionized workplace for the video game industry in Canada. The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 applied to become the certified bargaining agent for Keywords Studios, the contracting company through which the testers are employed, back in April. Now, Kotaku says the election has resulted in a 16-0 vote in favor of unionization. Before working on the fourth major game in the Dragon Age franchise, they also supported the development of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and Legacy of the Sith, an expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The testers, who work out of BioWare's Edmonton office, started organizing after Keywords Studios announced that they'll be required to return to office, whereas direct BioWare employees were give more options.

He has been involved in many areas that make use of AI and ML at EA, particularly AI for games development and verification. He started out with game development, but is now with the AI support team, which supports all of the company's teams.