November 7 is the annual celebration of the Mass Effect franchise, N7 Day, and developer BioWare may have hidden a message in its blog post commemorating the occasion. With Mass Effect‘s long dormancy, news of its announced fifth entry has been scarce, but N7 Day has provided some teasers in the past.
BioWare posted a blog from Mass Effect executive producer Mike Gamble, providing reassurance that the series is still moving ahead, with the studio “heads-down and focused exclusively on Mass Effect.” Throughout the blog post, however, italicized letters and words appear to spell out four phrases: URL, Mass Effect, Krogan, and N7. The matter is complicated by EA-published sister titles skate. and Apex Legends being both italicized and in bold text.
The blog post ends with a post script of Gamble writing, “there is no secret game information to be gleaned by anything I’m saying today, I promise.” The clues seem fairly obvious, however, and BioWare has hidden messages for deciphering a URL in N7 Day celebrations before. There could be another teaser hidden somewhere, or the whole thing could be a wild goose chase.
N7 Day Blog May Be Hiding A New Mass Effect 5 Teaser
BioWare Has Done It Before
With BioWare preoccupied in recent years with Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the next, untitled Mass Effect has received only a smattering of teaser trailers and images. In 2022, a teaser video led to a hidden message from Liara, and the following year, fans had to decode a URL puzzle to find the Epsilon teaser trailer on the EA website. Suffice it to say, Gamble’s promise that the blog post contains no hidden information isn’t being taken too seriously.
As far as I have seen, the puzzle – if there is one – has not yet been solved. I have tried a handful of different URL combinations with the other italicized words, even combining them with the official skate. and Apex URLs to see if it’s simply a preview of the promised Mass Effect cosmetics coming to those games. If there is a hidden message in the BioWare blog post, it shouldn’t be terribly long before fans figure it out, at which point we’ll update this article with the solution.
N7 Day 2025 Update Promises Mass Effect 5 Development Is Well Underway
BioWare Is “Focused Exclusively On Mass Effect”
Recent events at BioWare and EA have been cause for concern. First, BioWare’s staff was cut in half in early 2025 amid layoffs and restructuring under EA, which sparked worry over Mass Effect‘s future. Fans have also been wary of EA’s record-breaking private equity buyout, in which the publisher was acquired by the Saudi Arabian government via its Public Investment Fund and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners firm. There have been widespread worries that these right-leaning entities will stifle creative freedom under EA.
This year’s N7 Day blog doesn’t offer any details on the new game, but does reassure fans that “the next Mass Effect game is in development.” Even further, Gamble writes, “We have a lot of universe to cover, lots of features to build, and lots of romances to figure out.” The new game seemed to only enter full production after the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, so it’s ultimately unsurprising that there isn’t anything yet to show. Gamble does promise, however, that “when [BioWare’s] ready, it’ll be a lot of fun to show.”
The rest of ... turns its attention to the in-production Mass Effect television show, which is being undertaken by Amazon. The big news on this front is that the show will take place after the original trilogy, meaning a canon ending to Mass Effect 3 may be chosen for the setting moving forward. While a new teaser is potentially about to be uncovered, another N7 Day has come and gone with very little news of the new Mass Effect game, so it will likely still be some time until it’s ready to be shown off.
- Released
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May 14, 2021
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood, Drug Reference, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, Violence
- Developer(s)
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BioWare
- Publisher(s)
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Electronic Arts
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 4