BioWare Austin Cancels Development of Shadow Realms

Published: February 9, 2015 6:31 PM /

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Shadow Realms Cancelled

Shadow Realms, the multiplayer role-playing game under development by BioWare Austin, has been cancelled. Jeff Hickman, the General Manager for BioWare Austin, has released an official statement on the end of development.

The decision to scuttle the project is rather sudden considering the title was only announced last August and was gearing up for closed alpha testing. Despite the reported healthy sales figures of Dragon Age: Inquisition the decision has been made to scrap what would have been a new conceptual title for BioWare as a developer. Hickman did not get into the specifics about how the decision to end the development of Shadow Realms was made but did thank fans and testers for their contribution:

"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."
Hickman goes on to describe that the developers working on Shadow Realms will be repurposed for work on BioWare's controversial yet fiscally solvent MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Shortly after the announcement that Shadow Realms was cancelled Bruce Maclean, Senior Producer at BioWare Austin, released a blog post updating the current standing of Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare has yet to announce the new IP in development but considering recent titles it is likely to on a larger scale than Shadow Realms.

Are you disappointed by the cancellation of Shadow Realms? What do you think this decision says about BioWare Austin, if anything?

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Born in Niagara Falls, the northeast edge of the rust belt, amateur author and audiophile Thomas Nelson has exhausted almost two decades as an elitist PC… More about Thomas