Amazon's Mass Effect series has been reported as still moving forward after BioWare's closure, but a new claim from former BioWare developers adds a new wrinkle tied to EA's new owners. They say a flag resembling the Pride flag was taken out of pitch footage for the cancelled Mass Effect: Universe, and the English-language write-ups tell two different versions of how it happened.
Game Informer, citing IGN's sources at Prime Video, says the show remains in development with its creatives still attached. That includes showrunner Doug Jung (Star Trek Beyond), who Deadline reported took the job in June 2025, writer Dan Casey (F9) and executive producer Michael Gamble, who led the cancelled game at BioWare. There's still no release window, and the big open questions are what happens to the show if EA ever sells Mass Effect and how it handles the trilogy's endings now that Universe planned to make every one canon.
As GameFragger reported, the flag claim comes from ex-BioWare employees who talked to French outlet BFM Tech without giving their names. Kotaku's summary of that report says BioWare took the flag out of a presentation for the game that would have been Mass Effect 5, fearing it "could cause friction" with executive management. BFM reporter Sylvain Trinel, quoted by Kotaku, said it was cut "in anticipation of potential negative feedback given Electronic Arts' current shareholding structure." None of this has been officially confirmed, and EA still hadn't answered Kotaku's request for comment as of this post going up.
Destructoid reported a different version, based on a machine translation of the French piece. It says BioWare was ordered to remove the flag because it was "too similar to the LGBTQIA+ one," and it puts that order on EA's new owners.
TheGamer reads the original report as the developers pulling the flag before EA saw the footage. It writes, "Some have claimed the flag was left in when the demo was shown to EA and the publisher was asked to remove it. That is not what was initially reported."
There's also a third account. Kala Elizabeth, an illustrator who has backed the #SaveMassEffect campaign, wrote on X that former developers told her the game had no flags in it, but that it did still have same-sex romances.
Because the "shareholding structure" in Trinel's quote points to EA's new owners, they're the ones the coverage keeps naming. A group led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and including Silver Lake and Affinity Partners closed a $55 billion deal to take EA private in August. Kotaku adds that EA management had told its sources the new owners wouldn't make creative decisions.
None of the flag reports I've seen mention the show…
But with BioWare closed, the franchise and the show's future rest with EA.
What do you think? Do you still expect Amazon's Mass Effect series to make it to Prime Video?
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