BioWare's Shadow Realms reportedly "rebooted," pushed back to 2017

BioWare revealed Shadow Realms last summer as a "4v1 asymmetrical online RPG," in which a party of four heroes will throw down against a mysterious, powerful figure known as the Shadowlord. It was intended to focus heavily on story, as is the way with BioWare, with a strong pencil-and-paper flavor. But rumors reported by Kotaku say that may all be changing.

The site reports that two industry sources have said the game has been canceled outright, while a third—cited specifically as "reliable"—said it was actually rebooted in late October, which would be around the time that BioWare postponed the planned closed alpha test. The updated design will apparently incorporate a full single-player campaign, according to the source, and will thus push the launch target back to sometime in 2017.

Kotaku claimed to have seen a photograph of an internal EA database showing that the Shadow Realms servers were recently shut down. It also explained how the change in direction may be related to plans to integrate the game with Origin: Games built around Origin get bigger budgets, according to the report, and the failure of Command & Conquer and Dawngate to do so may have hobbled their development and contributed to their cancellations.

This is all entirely unverified and EA hasn't commented on the situation, but Kotaku has a pretty good record when it comes to reporting on these sorts of rumors, and the delay of the alpha and BioWare's silence since then—the Shadow Realms Twitter account has been inactive since the end of October—does appear to fit the narrative. We'll let you know as we find out more.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.