Early Mass Effect 3 Winners May Have Jumped Into Legal Hot Water [Update]

The two men who won an early copy of Mass Effect 3 this weekend may have broken both state and federal laws by trying to raffle it off.

[shadowwizard]

Typical EA.

[kingdavid]

Still.. Why wouldnt you just play it? Unless they arent gamers.

[Ace_Pheonix]

Or they just don't really care about Mass Effect. If I won it, I'd do the same. If I didn't already own a Vita I could easily afford one with ME3 money and then some. Or they do like ME and would rather get cash and then just buy a retail copy at launch.

[scrambles]

People will pay hefty sums of money to play it a little bit early. So if you can sell the game for 5k and wait a few weeks to actually play the game, why wouldnt you? You just made a huge amount of money and have the game. People sold Wiis on ebay for 6000$ before people could get them easily! Sounds like a win win situation to me.

[kingdavid]

@Ace

Well you dont go halfway through the desert to go looking for it if they didnt care about mass effect.

[coolasj]

Because, it's not worth $100+ just to play something a few days early. I would gladly sell it for like $200 and just buy a copy later.

[SilentNegotiator]

Because if you don't care about Mass Effect, you're not a gamer.

/s

[Ares84HU]

Just like other said, you could make some extra money off the game and than just go into the store and buy it on release. It's not like they don't care about ME3 since they entered the competition so they must care. But if there is a chance to make some money why wouldn't you? I would.

Also, I don't know what laws they have broken by selling "their property". Once the game was given to them it became theirs. I hope they win and counter-sue these assholes and win that too.

[Lord_Sloth]

Maybe because nobody on this entire planet is shutting the hell up about Mass Effect 3 and haven't for the last few months now and they wanted a break? I know I do. Amazon will deliver my copy and I'm shelfing it because I'm sick of it before it's even come out!

[Captain Qwark 9]

READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE YOU START BASHING EA WHEN YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT!

ea has nothing to do with this

edit:

they could have sold the game and it would have been totally fine. they chose however to sell as if it were a lottery, thats the problem. most people just toss the copy up on ebay, not try to run a raffle. once again nothing to do with ea, the sellers were ignorant of their own laws and chose to break them, its that simple.

they could have thrown it up on ea, sold it to one guy, donated some and kept some. perfectly legal that way.

[suicidalblues]

@wallis

Writing in caps doesn't make you right.

[Rowland]

wasn't this a publicity stunt organised by EA ?

[SITH]

This has absolutely nothing to do with EA or even the fact a game was involved. It could have been a car and these people would be in equal trouble. RTFA!

[honkyjesus]

Ace, the reason you can't buy ME3 is you own a Vita? I think you mean you don't have cash, the fact you own a Vita is not stopping you physically from buying the game. You are just poor right now.

[Snookies12]

I'm poor from buying a Vita... :(

But I've never been happier lol!

[showtimefolks]

so when EA was thinking of this kind of promotion nothing like this ever came up? if i had a early copy i would sell it on ebay and buy one later

i mean was there a letter with the game that says you could not sell it? if i found it legally than i should have every right to sell,trade,play or whatever with it

[JsonHenry]

One more example of how the government needs to get the hell out of the personal affairs of people and their legally obtained personal property. In a "free" country this would not be an issue.

[FrightfulActions]

Ron Paul! :D

[Snookies12]

Herman Cain! He was the best ever... I loved when he said stupid things...

[mynameisEvil]

Man, tell me me about it. Every day, I feel less proud to be an American because of our damn government acting as though we're too incompetent and stupid to act by ourselves (well, thanks to our PATHETIC educational system, some people friggin' can't). It's just embarrassing and infuriating.

I was born too damn late!

[JsonHenry]

No man, you were born at the right time. If ever we needed true patriots that want and desire freedom the way America was set up to be it is now. Don't be discouraged.

Inform others that are unaware. Vote only for candidates worth voting for and not "the lesser of two evils". And lastly, God forbid, it should come to it- Fight.

[Soldierone]

Yeah I have to agree. Our political system is so messed up right now and is driving us into hell faster than anyone ever has gone there.

I mean you watch those shows on television that revolve around extremely stupid people (like repo shows or that Hardocre Pawn) and our government acts like 90 percent of this country is that incompetent. Listen to how they talk to us, they honestly think the entire audience is so stupid and I point out things all the time. Its like common sense no longer exists.

The best quote there is: "How many laws and restrictions does there need to be to be free?" If you think about it anything fun or useful is probably against the law in some way, or has a politician arguing that it should be.

[Blaine]

What are you saying? All this is, is a law against people running their own lotteries. Can you even begin to imagine the ways people could get screwed over if everyone was free to run their own lotteries for personal gains? This isn't about personal property, it's about running your own lottery for personal gains. It's a law that is in place to protect [admittedly not too intelligent] people from being taken advantage of by crooks. You don't run your own lottery for personal gains, that's all.

[MostJadedGamer]

People should be free to do what they want with their own personal property.

[Blaine]

Did you read what I said?

This is NOT about personal property. It's about running an illegal lottery.

Doing what you want with your property and running your own lottery are totally unrelated topics.

[Legion]

@MostJadedGamer

You are right as long as they don't involve anyone else. Once they involve the community then it becomes non-personal.

They can sit in their dining room and draw raffle tickets out of a hat and jump up and down when they win their own personal lottery. But a lottery really isn't a lottery until it is available to someone other then themselves.

Lotteries and other such chance betting systems are controlled by the government in most all civilized countries. Get over it. It protects the public from the greedy scammers that are out to get the money from the masses. It's just that this time the Mass Effect was them getting into trouble for doing something illegal. They could have filed for a waiver to hold a raffle and avoided all of this mess.

[Arksine]

I was just about to post something similar. While I agree with JsonHenry's general statement about the government sticking their nose where it doesn't belong, this isn't one of those situations. You can't have people running their own gambling operations.

If these guys had simply tried to sell it on eBay they could have accomplished a similar goal without issue. It appears they have cancelled the raffle so they will probably be okay. It sounds like they are relatively young, considering they "super apologize" for doing this, haha.

[FrightfulActions]

The article has been updated since its release. Crisis adverted! Lol.

The things that can be considered news these days is kinda silly.

[bahabeast]

if i won mass effect a month before release i would sell the shiz ouuta it and just wait for release buy another one

[honkyjesus]

DLC on disc day one and you pay for it bandwagon.

[CanadianTurtle]

No, they were the only ones with brains to do this stuff. I think they should be rewarded even more for their genius.

[blackhammer]

Just a case of, "holy shit, we didn't know about this. Let's stop this before our asses get handed to us by american justice!" So they did.

Yep, simple mistake. EA had nothing to do with it. Damn those gambling laws.

New plan: Ebay!

[ninjahunter]

You have got to be kidding me, not only were they going to put money towards charity, they would have also put money towards a business that could generate JOBS. But guess what, F'ing government cant have that, no sir.

[iMpuTeD]

lmao sucks for them that could have let to early pirated copies to.