It's been a rough couple of weeks for Mass Effect fans. EA shut BioWare down on October 21st, the next game in the series went with it, and now a report out of France claims a flag resembling the Pride flag was removed from that game's pitch footage, and outlets disagree on who made the call.
French outlet BFM Tech spoke with former BioWare developers who asked to stay anonymous. According to Kotaku's summary of that report, BioWare removed a flag resembling the Pride flag from a presentation for Mass Effect: Universe, the project that would have been Mass Effect 5. The reason given was a fear that it "could cause friction" with executive management.
This reportedly happened after EA went private in August, when a consortium led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, along with Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, completed its $55 billion buyout of the publisher.
BFM reporter Sylvain Trinel, quoted by Kotaku, said the flag was cut "in anticipation of potential negative feedback given Electronic Arts' current shareholding structure," and that the goal was to head off criticism from conservative executives rather than to hide inclusive content. TheGamer reads it the same way, reporting that the developers pulled the flag themselves because it "looked too much like a Pride flag" and "wasn't worth the risk," before EA ever saw the footage.
Destructoid, working from a machine translation, reported that BioWare was ordered to remove the flag because it was "too similar to the LGBTQIA+ one," with the order attributed to the studio's new owners. TheGamer acknowledges that version too, noting that some have claimed the flag "was left in when the demo was shown to EA and the publisher was asked to remove it," though it adds, "That is not what was initially reported." Destructoid places the flag in a video pitch and TheGamer in demo footage, not the game itself.
NONE of this has been confirmed on the record. The sources are anonymous, the original report is in French, and English-language outlets are working from different translations of it. Kotaku said it reached out to EA for comment, and no response had been added to its story as of Thursday. I haven't seen a statement from EA, BioWare or the PIF on any of it.
Kala Elizabeth, a freelance illustrator who has been part of the #SaveMassEffect push, posted on X that former BioWare developers told her there were no flags in the game, but that it did still include same-sex romances.
Kotaku notes that its own sources were told earlier by EA management that the new owners wouldn't make creative decisions, and that some employees were concerned about Saudi Arabia's human rights record toward queer people and about Affinity Partners founder Jared Kushner's ties to the Trump family.
BFM's sources also described a game set 600 years in the future, with a new protagonist and Liara T'Soni in a major role. The team had moved from the Frostbite engine that powered Mass Effect: Andromeda to Unreal Engine, was targeting a late 2028 release, and by those accounts was making good progress, even with some missed deadlines. Separately, a former developer has said Universe would have made every choice from the original trilogy canon.
According to BFM's sources, the pitch videos shown to the new management didn't convince executives the project was worth continuing. EA announced BioWare's closure on October 21st.
Former BioWare staff have been speaking up since the shutdown. The series' writers broke their silence right after the closure, and fans have taken the #SaveMassEffect campaign all the way to a Times Square billboard.
What do you think? Does this report change how you see the cancelled Mass Effect: Universe?
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