Dragon Age Creator Says BioWare’s Two Major Teams Didn’t Get Along

Summary

BioWare’s Dragon Age and Mass Effect teams largely operated independently of each other, with neither getting along.
The Anthem team, composed of former Mass Effect staff, did not welcome members from the Dragon Age team.
Internal friction and cultural differences at BioWare have contributed to struggles with recent game releases.

David Gaider, a former lead writer at BioWare, says the teams behind Dragon Age and Mass Effect were often not friendly with each other. The studios’ two key franchises have undergone similar experiences in the past few years, with recent Mass Effect and Dragon Age titles experiencing lengthy dev cycles and the latest entries in each facing uneven critical and fan receptions. Now a former BioWare employee has offered some insight into these series’ corporate culture, and it doesn’t paint things in an entirely positive light.

Gaider’s last project at BioWare was the ill-fated live service sci-fi game Anthem. The company shut down Anthem in 2021, just two years after its release, which was all the more surprising in light of BioWare’s previous success with both the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises. Now that Gaider has shed some light on why he left BioWare, some of the reasons behind these struggles are a little clearer.

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In a Bluesky thread about his decision to leave BioWare and form Summerfall Studios, Gaider highlighted the tension between BioWare’s two main teams. According to Gaider, Dragon Age and Mass Effect largely functioned as separate companies, each with their own cultures and workflows, with neither getting along with the other very well. This structure makes sense in light of comments from another former BioWare dev, Mark Darrah, who said that Dragon Age: The Veilguard devs would not help with Mass Effect 4 immediately and that it was unusual for the company to have so much of its workforce collaborating on the latest Dragon Age title.

Former BioWare Lead Writer Says Dragon Age and Mass Effect Teams Had Friction Between Them

That was a mistake. You see, the thing you need to know about BioWare is that for a long time it was basically two teams under one roof: the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team. Run differently, very different cultures, may as well have been two separate studios. And they didn’t get along.
— David Gaider (@davidgaider.bsky.social) 2025-04-14T04:33:25.984Z

Further in the thread, Gaider explained how the Anthem team was largely made up of former Mass Effect staff. Because Gaider came from the Dragon Age team, these employees apparently did not extend a warm welcome. Gaider went on to say how his attempts to give Anthem a more science-fantasy feel, which he was told to do, were largely met with criticism that his writing was “too Dragon Age.” This friction between the franchises has popped up before, too. Back in 2022, Mark Darrah said that Mass Effect teams never used Dragon Age‘s custom-built tools, and this kind of disconnect led to development problems in both series.

Ultimately, the animosity and difficulties, along with other issues with BioWare’s corporate culture, became too much for Gaider, and he left the studio. It’s now been several years since Anthem‘s development, so it’s unclear if this is still how things operate at the company. Despite a positive critical reception, Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed EA’s expectations by nearly 50% and was divisive among fans, but it’s uncertain if this is because of problems stemming from BioWare’s internal tension or other issues entirely. All eyes are now turning to the next Mass Effect to see how the company can rebound.