Mass Effect lead writer Drew Karpyshyn leaves Bioware (again)

Drew Karpyshyn, the lead writer on both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, has left Bioware, and will be working with a new studio called Fogbank Games, which is headed up by another former Bioware lead writer, Daniel Erickson.

It's the second time Karpyshyn has departed Bioware: he left in 2012 to work on a series of novels, before returning in 2015 to continue working on Star Wars: The Old Republic and, later, Anthem.

Karpyshyn will again be writing novels, but he'll also be working with Fogbank Games on an episodic, narrative game based on one of 20th Century Fox's franchises. A number of former Bioware writers are working at Fogbank, so no doubt he'll feel right at home.

Explaining his departure on his website, Karpyshyn said: "For many people, working at BioWare would be their dream job and they can’t imagine anyone stepping away from it. But it was time for me to move on.

"Everyone who works at BioWare pours their heart and soul into the games they are making. It’s creatively demanding and—at times—exhausting. In the past, I’ve managed to juggle outside projects with my work at BioWare, but it always took a toll. And there were always outside projects I had to pass on because they would represent a conflict of interest with BioWare or EA properties. So I made the decision to step back (again) and focus on my freelance work."

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.