I know there’s been a ton of Mass Effect 3 news. Hell, if it makes you feel better, I’m getting sick of writing about it. However, this latest news is so absurd, so amazingly ridiculous, that it must be shared.
A member of the BioWare forums, posting under the timeless name “El_Spiko”, has filed a false advertising claim with the Federal Trade Commission. Specifically, his claim singles out Electronic Arts, claiming that the title didn’t live up to the claims made by the developers before release. He writes:
“This is not somethign [sic] I was happy to do, but after the terrible ending that was in no way the product that had been advertised to me and the lack of any kind of response from Bioware/EA to address this, I felt it was one of my only recourses…”
Wow. When I first read this, I was shocked. I’m still shocked; this kind of behavior enrages me to no end. You didn’t like the ending? Fine. But to go and file a federal complaint is taking this to another level. You are actually claiming, legally, that this product impacted your life because what was advertised was not what you received. Where was this sort of rage over the awful cliffhanger ending of Halo 2? Where has this rage been hiding when we’re promised…well, anything by Peter Molyneux?
Look, Mass Effect 3 is a good game. I haven’t finished it yet, but it could even be great. Between Andrew and myself, we’ve sunk so many hours into it, and we’re both happy. A weak ending will be disappointing, but it won’t undo the thirty or forty some odd hours of entertainment we get out of the game. It wouldn’t undo the two other great games in this series that came before it.
Gamers are turning into bullies. XBox Live is a cesspool in any Call of Duty match. We throw shitfits if a developer makes slight tweaks to the game, as Blizzard does with World of Warcraft, promising to quit. Now, if we don’t like how your game ends, we’ll complain to the government. I think I speak for any sane adult that’s sick of this behavior:
Grow up.
For what it is worth, “El_Spiko” has also filed a Better Business Bureau complaint. He invites anyone interested to join either filing. That’s as balanced as I’m going to be on this story, and I refuse to link to it in the off chance someone reading this wants to join him.
2 Comments
This guy is clearly of the lower 1% of gaming society. Do people file FTC and BBB complaints when their favorite author doesn’t end a book how they wanted? No.
There is clearly a lot of strife over the ending. You know what that means? It means Bioware made a series of games that people cared about and were passionate about. Not everyone agrees with the ending, and I’m sure we’ll see more clarification to the ending through DLC, but it was their ending to the Shepard story.
If any of the theories I’ve been reading on the ending are even slightly true, the ending may not be what it seems — and Bioware have outwitted (or indoctrinated?) a huge swath of its fans.
When you graduate to the big leagues of artistic endeavor, this is what you have to deal with. There are people who arbitrarily funnel their disappointment with their lives into disappointment with everything else.