An update today from BioWare confirmed that Mass Effect: Andromeda will indeed not be getting any new content. Kotaku reported as much back in late June, when sources familiar with BioWare’s plans said that Andromeda would receive no single-player DLC, a huge departure from every previous game in the series.
In today’s announcement, BioWare confirmed the reports stating, “Our last update, 1.10, was the final update for Mass Effect: Andromeda. There are no planned future patches for single-player or in-game story content.”
After only five months out in the wild, the game has more or less been abandoned. The news comes after a series of previous patches that attempted to fix animation issues and build out the game’s multiplayer mode.
Going forward, it appears that while the latter may still see some new tweaks and additions, the game’s mammoth single-player story has reached its conclusion. The studio went on:
“Early in development, we decided to focus Mass Effect: Andromeda‘s story on the Pathfinder, the exploration of the Andromeda galaxy, and the conflict with the Archon. The game was designed to further expand on the Pathfinder’s journey through this new galaxy with story-based APEX multiplayer missions and we will continue to tell stories in the Andromeda Galaxy through our upcoming comics and novels, including the fate of the quarian ark.”
As for non-story content, in its statement BioWare added that players can expect some more information about multiplayer content, including plans for N7 Day, in the coming weeks.
Andromeda was plagued with problems from the very start, including before the game officially launched up and through the first month after release. This led BioWare to scale back BioWare Montreal into a “support” studio back in May, effectivley absorbing it back into BioWare proper.
As Kotaku documented in June, the game had no shortage of development woes as well, ranging from rushed schedules to problems with the Frostbite engine used to make it. While it’s hard to think that BioWare won’t ever make another Mass Effect game, today’s news confirms what a setback Andromeda was to the series and leaves its near-future prospects in limbo.
Comments
43 responses to “BioWare Confirms No DLC For Mass Effect: Andromeda”
Given how much hate the game got on release, and how fairly forgettable it was (despite being a fairly solid game IMO), I’m not surprised they’re calling it quits.
It makes sense. The name of the game unfortunately now has this tainted legacy that patches just haven’t been able to shake. Releasing DLC would be a massive risk on investment.
I am sure the executives at EA and Bioware debated long on whether to go through with a DLC plan. It must have been tough for the team to go this route but ultimately I think it’s the best move for the franchise.
The death of a franchise, good night sweet prince.
I actually admire this decision and that it was publically confirmed. They released a decent game (not without issues granted), resolved some of those underlying issues and went “yep, it’s done”.
Thats not what happened.
They released the game. It had a major budget and it undersold massively.
They didnt get back the amount expected and we’ve just seen them abandon it.
This isn’t something honorable, this is a blatant example of “Well shit we released a half assed product and they punished us for it… meh lets not try to rectify it lets just dump it”.
It’s entirely their fault, but even in these very comments you’ll see people blame the fans and the reception to the game, rather than EA for handing development to a studio who wasn’t used to making AAA games.
Bingo.
Disagree. I bet most of you who have it a hard time never even played it.
Are you truly so spoiled for choice on space exploration action RPG games?
I’ve played it, it wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t that good. For what it was however, it was disgraceful it got released in the condition it was.
Your second comment makes no sense, I should just opt to play a different game, instead of one in one of my favorite franchises?
It’s only been 5 months & a major publisher & developer have abandoned a major game release, Hello games haven’t abandoned No Man’s Sky, You are a blind consumer.
On the flip side, what else is bringing in income for Hello Games? No Man’s Sky is their home run, if they dont support it they dont have anything else.
EA can dump whatever they want because they make so much money off everything they can afford to cut losses wherever they want.
I still hope they continue the Andromeda story, but it sucks I have to read a friggin comic to find out what happens to the Quarian ark. :/
This happens to often in games these days….
In what other games do you have to read a freaking comic to finish a story? please tell me.
So disappointing when people who dont like a game manage to derail a game for the people who did like it. Look its hardly perfect, but it is one of those times I am glad I didnt listen to reviews. I almost bought it as a ‘pffft it really cant be THAT bad’ dare and it really wasnt. That doesnt mean i dont see some of the shortfalls like the reviews pointed out, but it was the fact they were taken out of context in the whole experience.
They reviewed the game based on what they wanted it to be, not the game the devs were trying to make.
Thats a major assumption. I might give it to you a few people did but definitely not all. When it undersold THAT poorly compared to the rest of the series, there were legitimate issues.
hhmm wonder why it undersold? could it have anything to do with the out-of-scale backlash from online trolls or people who have nothing better to do than go ‘stacks-on’ on whatever to target online is for that week. OR Could it have anything to do with so many reviews not even hiding the fact they werent reviewing the game they got, but how it failed to be the game they wanted. OR could it be that people who take that sort of stuff at face value and simply believe it, with a sheep mentality.
I dont think it was perfect but it was just yet another example (all too familiar in gaming, tv, movies) these days, in which the public perception is of grand badness on a scale truly out of odds with its sins. Something has to be truly extraordinary, or it is the worse game EVER.
People have forgotten that even average, flawed art is not devoid of positives.
.
It was a subpar game that was unfinished in its released state, it got slammed for being such and quite rightly so. When it hit, the game didn’t run properly, had major issues with controls, textures, loading times, you name it. It was a mess, albeit a mess that got sorted out in due time. But it was a shocking mess and deserved to be reviewed as such, not given a free pass.
In terms of ‘grand badness’, it should be elevated and held there, because it’s a AAA scale game. If this were a small budget game, from an indie studio, or a mid level producer, people would have been more forgiving. But this game was marketed to hell at everyone for a long time, it was promised to everyone to be a solid product (remember them espousing to PC players about how it was going to be great on pc? Shyeah…) and in the end what did they deliver? A broken ass game out of the gate.
Yay… they’ve just royally screwed their fanbase by abandoning the game. They’ve ditched it because it’s far easier to ignore a problem than to actually work on it. They’re probably learning from the WB school of game design no doubt. Stop handing them the lube so they don’t have to go in dry.
Look I personally enjoyed the game more than I didn’t, but the reviews weren’t that far off.
Maybe it wasn’t fair to judge it against Mass Effect… But that’s kind of hard and when it comes right down to it I’d probably replay the trilogy instead of Andromeda.
I would have played through any single player dlc they released though… So sad about what happened.
This is the very same comment you made about No Mans Sky. Having a sook because people dont like a game you like. You got your game, And you can still play it. Stop sooking. People had high expectations for the game because Bioware made such brilliant games previously with the trilogy, Of course you would expect a game of the same quality.
People were justified in not liking this game. Get over it.
You must have forgot about the backlash for ME3. Dragon Age 2 and 3. Bioware has been on shaky ground for a while. That doesnt mean those games are bad or devoid of positives. The last thing I was expecting to like after DA:I was another Bioware game, yet through its flaws and issues, it didnt match the hate and all round narkyness it was getting online.
Yes its similar to No Man’s Sky. Similar to Destiny. Similar to (insert many movies, tv shows and games) because one thing is clear after so many years of “OMG this is like the worse game all the time, the devs dont know what they are doing, they obviously dont play their own games, they have ruined this franchise forever, blah blah”. All that changes are the name of the game, devs, sins. Outrage by the lack of perfection is the new black. Has been for years.
In this case I cant keep playing the game because whiners trash it so much they are no longer making any more of it. Thats my original point. Fans of this game can no longer expect to get anything because those who hated it derailed public opinion. They couldnt just go “nope didnt like it” then moved on to something else, nope it was all like “OMG this is like the worse..” Feedback is one thing, excessive outrage is another. the “if i cant have the toy I want, no one can” approach to life.
Yet they still deliever DLC for those games, And the negative opinions were tiny compared to MEA for justifiable reasons.
I didnt realize Bioware came over to your house and removed the game from your library because of negative reviews and feedback? Since when did this happen?
YOU CAN STILL PLAY THE GAME.
You are a gaming hipster, Acting like you are high and mighty because you like a game other dont and sook about other not liking something you do. You are enititled to you opinion, Just like others are entitled to voice theirs on this game. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing isnt it?
If bioware does not want negative opinions derailing a game, Perhaps they should make a better one next time.
I doubt ” this pile of dog turd.” type of negative opinion would ever inspire anyone, in any field to try hard next time. Nah its the type of thing people just roll their eyes as they hit they hit a forward arrow to move on to the next.
constructive feedback vs hyperbole, its not such a fine line.
Are you kidding me? Have you forgotten about Copy-paste Age 2? How they short-circuited companion gearing in the name of time efficiency in design? How they reused the same environment over, and over, and over? What about the part where the game was basically an on-rails RPG, where none of the decisions you made actually had any significant consequence on the overall story? Or ME3 which was basically ME2 but with a new storyline and the most ridiculous ending mechanic imaginable given the retention of choices since the beginning of the series? And yet in spite of these glaring flaws and deficiencies both games got solid DLC releases.
Sure, Andromeda had bugs. It was pushed out the gate early and underpolished. That is sadly par for the course in the gaming industry these days, but that doesn’t make it right by any means. However, once those bugs were fixed it was a reasonably solid planetary exploration RPG. The writing was solid, the choices had actual impacts on the storyline, the characters brought soul to the game, and during the exploration phase you got the feeling of actual exploration rather than in the original ME, where most of the players attention was spent trying to control that damn Mako to stop it trying to do backflips every few seconds. Other than “it was launched with bugs”, the one thing I could point out as coming close to warranting the publisher having the developer abandon the singleplayer game this early in its release cycle was the poor sales. And the sales were so shit-poor because of everyone jumping on the hate bandwagon early and hard. As much as I hate to agree with Blakeavon, ME:A never stood a chance once that bandwagon was hitched up and rolling, regardless of what Bioware Montreal (as opposed to Bioware Edmonton, the studio that made the originals, so yes, completely different development studio making comparison with the originals unfair) did to rectify it.
Another one who thinks because they liked a game any negative opinion of that game are invalid.
No, another one who thinks that the majority of the negative opinions expressed prior to and around release went unobjectively overboard considering the fact that the majority of the issues criticised in those negative opinions were the result of lack of polish that have been easily rectified since rather than inherent issues with the gameplay itself. And you yourself seem to be of the position that “In my opinion the game was bad, therefore anyone who tries to reasonably explain why the overwhelming hate towards the game prior to and around its release might possibly be unjustified is wrong and deserves to be mocked”.
I bought it.
I liked it.
The environmental graphics were lovely.
The alien species looked pretty good (except for the rubber-faced Turians)
The character graphics were truly appalling, something they never fixed. The human animations were terrible, the human expressions were expressionless. I could make my Ryder look ridiculous very easily. Making her look human was a different matter. Even the defaults looked terrible. The single thing you see most in the entire game looked worse than ME1, a 10 year old engine. At no stage did my Pathfinder outshine my Shepard in any way. In a AAA, story driven RPG that was unforgivable.
I enjoyed the game. I wouldn’t pay for any DLC though.
I hope they continue with the franchise, but I hope they learn from their mistakes.
Perhaps this will teach bioware not to half ass a mass effect game. It had to have been obvious to them people were hyped for a mass effect game based on the brilliance that were the trilogy, Yet they made this pile of dog turd.
As someone that enjoyed the game this kinda sucks, it wasnt the best game ive ever played (not even the best this year) but it was solid enough to not have buyers remorse. I wasnt hardcore into the ME series so maybe that’s why.
Since I have only played and fought through the first entry of the series four times to fully unlock all the achievements within the game, I knew this series wasn’t for me. Every single installment of the Mass Effect series has had problems and after the drama regarding Mass Effect Andromeda, I’m not surprised that even after all these years, EA still hasn’t learnt their lesson.
I kind of feel that we’ll be having a similar conversation about Anthem in a few years.
It’s like EA execs only talk to their studio’s marketing departments. Everything is the greatest ever!, until it’s not.
I remember years and years back, there was this whole thing with the EA board, where basically, if a game wasn’t immediately receiving 9s and 10s in reviews, it wasn’t worth supporting for the long haul. That was around, possibly 6 or 7 years back now at least? It seems it’s only gotten worse as times gone by. Now they’re outright ditching in a few months.
remember the final medal of honor reboot? how according to EA it passed all their Mock Reviews and focus group tests and were then utterly amazed that it failed so hard?
I am still upset about Dead Space 3. It was the first time I realised how a publisher can ruin a franchise.
surprising? nope
disappointing? sure, ME:A wasn’t perfect but imo it was decent enough but decent doesn’t get you far for AAA games it seems
I try to explain to gamers, their money talks and bashing a game will kill it off, EA doesnt care.
people bashed the game to death
now we are here
they just dont get it its heard mentality
I still remember being blown away by the original Mass Effect on PC.
It was everything I wanted in a game. Dead Space came out at a similar time and I couldn’t believe what great new choices EA was making!
Then I loved Mass Effect 2 even harder. And then Dead Space 2. Heck yeah!
Then the 3rd ones. Good but… not the same flavour. Bit bland. Not as good.
Now Dead Space is abandoned and after the 4th Mass Effect, abandoned too.
Shows that EA (and Ubisoft’s) model of publishing just destroys franchises. They run them into the ground until they’re not profitable anymore. Or we’re sick of them.
In a rare case of someone defending Ubisoft…
Rainbow Six Siege was nearly dead at one stage and Ubisoft put in the effort of turning that around, they even have a second year of DLC in the works as a result of the success. They’re trying the same to bring back For Honor now, they’re still pushing out content for The Division, we’re getting what is arguably the most needed revamp to a franchise in the form of Assassins Creed Origins, as well as a new Far Cry among other things.
Comparing the support of Ubisoft and EA for their franchises is not remotely similar anymore. If it’s not Battlefield it may as well be dead far as EA goes.
Loved it so much I completed it three times in the first month and got the platinum, something I’ve only done for two games.
Gutted. I really, really enjoyed this game and couldn’t wait to see what ME:A’s ME2 would be.
Disappointed as I am (Indignantly: Wut? No Elcor?), I suspect that’s for the best. It had promise, and the combat was interesting, but the story, universe building and plot pacing, characterisation and interaction you want in a bioware game just didn’t measure up. I’m in the “it wasn’t dreadful, and bits of it were good, but well …” camp.
Perhaps BW/EA need to get a bit of distance, take a hard look at where the development process failed them, and wait till the writing a-team have time to do a proper job on the franchise. Maybe wrangling with a new engine and a new setting and new mechanics and a new writing team was too much pressure to put on one game.
If it were me, I’d wait a couple of years, hope that Anthem goes gangbusters and the next DA hits it out of the park, and then soft-reboot Andromeda a couple of hundred years after the events of the game (maybe wake up whatzername in the intro, having taken that long to find a cure for her condition?). So, you’ve got a setting more or less analogous to the Milky Way, but with a few new races and wrinkles, and you can get on with telling a larger story (Remnant: why and what? Bad guys: Ersatz Romans, or more nuanced? And alllll the romances … ) in it.
A real shame.
I am a big fan of the ME series, especially ME2 – which was the game that hooked me on the franchise. I looked forward to MEA for a while, especially given the time between games. I played through MEA and completed nearly everything there was to complete. Even with fanboy tinted glasses I have to admit it wasn’t the game I expected and felt a little underwhelming. There were some great moments, but nothing compared to ME2 in my opinion.
Then we heard hints at an expansion (Quarian Ark DLC), but this seemed to die down and I figured they would abandon it so I traded my copy several weeks back.
They’ll focus on making what they can now via multiplayer and that will be that.
Maybe one day they’ll release remasters of the original trilogy.
Good! This is good news!
ME:A wasn’t terrible. For me, however, it was one of the most blandest, uninspired games I have forced myself to play for 30+ hours. I bounced incredibly hard off the characters, the plot, the new worlds, and the new races. I found the entire game to be a pale imitation of Mass Effect, created by people with enough technical know-how to make a working game, but with about 1/4 the creativity and heart of the original Mass Effect team. For me, the writing was incredibly weak, with a throw-away plot, uninspired alien races (can you get any more boring than the Angara or Kett?) and characters ranging from at-best “acceptable” (Vetra, Drack, Pee-Bee) and utterly terrible (any human party member INCLUDING Ryder, but ESPECIALLY Liam).
Kill off the Andromeda franchise. Just axe it. I don’t want to see Ryder anymore. I don’t want another minute spent with Liam or Cora. I hope the Angara never make another return with their “commonwealth accents” (South African, Jamaican, some UK and some awful Australian accents thrown in) and I hope the Kett are never brought up again in all their forgettable green-brown blandness.
I want the ME universe to branch out, but as Giant Bomb put it, ME:A is like the “Lion King 2 and a half” or Straight-to-DVD Disney sequal-level effort Mass Effect Game.
This is MASS EFFECT. A game whose original I played over 6 times and whose sequels I have played god-knows how many times. Being an “Okay-at-times” game isn’t good enough, BioWare. Being bland and functional isn’t good enough. A C-level effort for an A-grade franchise isn’t good enough.
Sorry, but it’s time they start over. Entirely. Andromeda never happened.
I look forward to trying it after the inevitable 85% off sale next northern hemisphere summer.
well fuck you bioware…that’s the last bioware game i waste my money on.
what a bunch of assholes
Please re-think your plan of dropping mass effect, mass effect is a fantastic story, thou this one is a bit lacking, the fan base for mass effect is massive, if you still would to drop it you in affect are cutting your own throats, you can salvage it, give a good ending to what you started.
Just think about it wisely