• News

Gaia project canceled by EA after over 5 years in development

A new game from EA's Montreal office has reportedly been canceled following over five years of development work.

Josh Hawkins

February 25, 2021 1:07 PM

7

Game development can be a fickle beast at times and game cancellations happen more often than you might think. It looks like Electronic Arts—the company behind the Battlefield series, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age—is throwing another project to the chopping block as it has canceled the Gaia project, which has reportedly been in development for almost six years at Motive Studios.

The report comes in from Bloomberg, citing the cancellation as a shifting of resources by the company as it re-evaluates its current gaming projects and chooses where to focus in the future.

The Gaia project was first teased in 2015, according to Bloomberg, though an official title was never given for the unreleased game. Last year, during it’s next-gen gaming featurette, EA teased a new project in development at Motive—its Montreal-based studio—calling it ambitious and innovate, as well as stating that it would put the “power and creativity in your hands”.

The tidbit showcased in that video looked a lot like popular game Garry’s Mod, and with EA already reportedly shifting focus on Dragon Age 4’s development and even canceling the Anthem do-over it’s not that surprising to see another project under the axe.

The Bloomberg post paints a very turbulent history for Motive and the team behind the Gaia project, with it often absorbing members from other teams whose studios had been shuttered by EA for poor game releases and other factors.

We’ll never really know what Gaia truly was, or even what it could have been. Despite losing a project, it may be comforting to Dragon Age fans and fans of EA’s other hit series to know that the publisher is taking such a long look at projects and casting them aside in favor of focusing in on making more prominent games as good as possible.

We’ll continue to monitor the situation. For now, though, it looks like Gaia has been shelved with no intent of ever being brought back into the light.

Josh Hawkins

Guides Editor

Joshua holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and has been exploring the world of video games for as long as he can remember. He enjoys everything from large-scale RPGs to small, bite-size indie gems and everything in between.