It's been a rough week for BioWare veterans trying their hands at new things: Two days after former BioWare general manager Casey Hudson announced the closure of Humanoid Origin, former Mass Effect lead writer and creative director Mac Walters has been forced to “pause operations” at Worlds Untold, just one year after it was founded.
"It’s hard to find the right words for this, but I wanted to share that we’ve made the very difficult decision to pause operations at Worlds Untold while we search for a new partner to help bring our vision to life," Walters said in a message on LinkedIn. "This was not a decision we made lightly—it’s been a deeply personal journey, and we’re all so proud of everything this team has built together."
A "pause" sounds temporary, and Walters added that "this isn’t goodbye—there’s more to come, and we look forward to sharing the next chapter with you when the time is right." But he also said employees at the studio "will be exploring new opportunities," suggesting that any sort of comeback is a distant dream.
It's an unfortunate outcome, although not at all out of step with the broader state of the videogame industry, which has been wracked by layoffs and closures throughout the past two years. What makes this particular closure—or "pause," although it certainly sounds like this is not just a small bump in the road—unusual is that it comes just a year after Worlds Untold was announced. It's a very sudden and sharp change in direction: Most of the cuts we've seen over the past couple of years arose from grossly bad decision-making during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, but that can't reasonably be the case here. If anything, it just seems like NetEase got cold feet.
