Key Takeaways
- Former Mass Effect writer Mac Walters has revealed operations at their new studio have been paused.
- World Untold was established in November 2023 and its team had been working on a third-person action-adventure game.
- Its employees have been told they’re free to seek out other opportunities while Worlds Untold’s doors are closed.
It’s shaping up to be a very bad week for former Mass Effect developers working on new projects. Former director Casey Hudson announced on Monday that their new studio is shutting down, and now Mac Walters, who previously worked on Mass Effect and Dragon Age, has revealed their studio Worlds Untold has indefinitely paused operations due to a lack of funding.
Walters announced the news on LinkedIn (thanks, VGC), detailing that the studio is looking for a new partner and has paused work on its projects until it can find a new one. However, the future for the studio doesn’t sound promising. In the second paragraph of Walters’ statement, the former BioWare writer urges studios on the lookout for talented individuals in game dev to consider their employees, noting that they’ve all been told they’re free to seek out other opportunities in the meantime.
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While having the ability to hit pause on Worlds Untold rather than shut it down completely like so many others have been forced to do recently is great, it’s unclear when or even if the studio will be back up and running. Walters assures fans this isn’t goodbye and that they look forward to sharing Worlds Untold’s next chapter whenever that time should come. Hopefully sooner rather than later so its employees aren’t forced to move on to find work.
Worlds Untold Is Pausing Operations
Mac Walters Insists This Isn’t Goodbye, Though
Walters worked at BioWare for 20 years and was a writer for the studio so recently that some of his work will have been included in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. He announced his departure in 2023 and revealed in November that he’d be forming Worlds Untold in association with NetEase. The studio was working on a narrative-driven third-person action-adventure game. Details on the project are unknown beyond that, but considering Walters’ pedigree – he was a senior writer on Mass Effect and the lead on the rest of the trilogy – there’s a strong chance it would have been a pretty great game.
Here’s hoping we haven’t seen the last of Worlds Untold and whatever its first project was going to be. As for Humanoid Origin, the Hudson-led studio that shut down this week, unfortunately, we may never see the game it was working on. An entirely new sci-fi IP likely inspired by Mass Effect and in development since 2021, it’s a shame that project will never be fully realized.
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