EA in the clear after investigation into Mass Effect 3 ending

Electronic Arts has successfully defended its position after being the subject of an investigation into the advertising campaign behind Mass Effect 3.

[CustardTrout]

Really?
I didn't enjoy the ending but this is a bit over the top.

[da_2pacalypse]

While I think the investigation is a bit over top... i think they have a pretty good point. The game ads and cover all promise vastly different experiences, while I don't think ME3 ever offered that at any point in any of the missions. Sure there were certain choices that Shepard must make, but the choices barely affected the outcome of any story element. All they affected were the battle readiness level (which didn't even matter if you think about it).

[Gaming101]

The readiness level at the end determined how much destruction the final explosion ended up causing - the lower your level, the more destruction. There were some parts that were different, like who lived and who died, who you chose to kill off in ME1 and people who either survived or didn't in ME2 all resulted in different cast members playing the same role with the same lines mostly. However they are still different and so the letter of the law would back them up which it did in this case.

[SilentNegotiator]

Interviewer: [Regarding the numerous possible endings of Mass Effect 2] "Is that same type of complexity built into the ending of Mass Effect 3?"

Hudson: "Yeah, and I’d say much more so, because we have the ability to build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about eventually tying them back together somewhere. This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them."

Mike Gamble (Associate Producer) [www.nowgamer.com]

.
When does it become acceptable to do an investigation if investigating out-right lies is "over the top"?

[sjaakiejj]

That's a statement in an interview, rather than an advertisement. The game wasn't advertised as such, which means that they weren't breaking any laws by having Hudson say something which he believed to be true. ;)

If interviews were sufficient grounds for getting ASA involved, Peter Molyneux would be on the street by now lol.

[SilentNegotiator]

But I'm really speaking from a consumer's perspective, not a government/lawyer's perspective. There's a difference between "should be" and "is", and lying in an interview (which DOES advertise the game and its features to many) SHOULD BE against some sort of code.

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal"
-MLK Jr.

(I'm not trying to invoke Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies, nor compare EA to "nazis", I just love MLK and this powerful, insightful quote. "Legal" doesn't mean the same thing as "right")

[Emilio_Estevez]

For shame N4G, approving a reported duplicate of a story that went live just 4hrs ago.

[Kinect]

get a life , dont you people got somethin better to do rather than stalking N4G's submission section or better yet get laid ..

[HebrewHammer]

Your name is Kinect.

That is all.

[LAWSON72]

Well buddy you get a life because clearly you have nothing better to do then insult people

[Mythicninja]

I can't believe you would talk to emilio estevez that way

[kingdavid]

Poor emilio. Hope you're okay buddy.

[LUCKYXS7LEVEN]

i don't rarely roam the internet to get attention

But when i do , i insult people because it makes me feel better inside because i have nothing to fear from my monitor screen

[SephirothX21]

Exactly you f*ckin worthless piece of sh|t! :)

[OhMyGandhi]

he was being sarcastic. and you were too...but he got disagrees?

and I almost...disagreed with him, but then I saw that smiley...well...it's just too much for me to process.

[LUCKYXS7LEVEN]

meh, it's the internet nothing is to be taken seriously unless they sent u a virus then u unleash all hell to track down the sender and kick his ass

[kevnb]

Wtf lol.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

We're still on this? I've been gaming for almost 30 years, and I can't remember an incident like this. People act like EA screwed the ending to their lives.

[WrAiTh Sp3cTr3]

lol

[HammadTheBeast]

Final Fantasy 13. Haters gonna hate.

[LUCKYXS7LEVEN]

Depends on the Mean of " LIFE" to some of this people

[WitWolfy]

Nah just ruined of what could've been one of the best endings to a Sci-Fi trilogy EVER!

[Les-Grossman]

Who made these guys in charge to decide this for everybody ?

[ninjahunter]

Green light for them to pull this stunt again? I think yes.

[ginsunuva]

Green light?

What about Red and Blue?

[smashman98]

Lol clever

[vortis]

Um, yeah, because like a giant investigation into a multi-billion dollar corporation would ever end in favor of consumers? What, you people think this is South Korea?

GTFO

[sjaakiejj]

It would, if the company actually broke the rules. In this case, EA didn't.

Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

[VideoGameJimmy]

Really? Investigation?

The only thing that needs to be investigated is why gamers are such babies when it comes to video game endings... for shame.

[ShinraE5]

For those that had valid gripes with the quality and story inconsistencies (and shared them in a respectable manner) there is nothing wrong with that.

And is "crying" about babies any more mature?

I would say to those who complained about the ending, as well as those who complained about them, both were right. You visit a game community and share thoughts ideas and gripes. To expect otherwise is foolhardy. But as they have the right to complain, so do you.

[Blackpool]

Even if it was a little extreme, i like how the gamers complained enough so they can get free DLC that explains the ending.

[Flewid638]

Wow. Imagine if everytime you saw a bad movie (or an awesome movie with a bad ending) the audience petitioned to take legal action against the film studio.

What? That just sounds retarded?

I rest my case....

[TekoIie]

It is retarded and i am defo not a big fan of the ending... not even a small fan.

Seriously people are taking legal action against a games ENDING. This is absolutely pathetic and the person who started this should stop wasting peoples money on something so childish. I was disappointed with the ending but guess what, months later im over it.

[WitWolfy]

HERE HERE! Even if they did lie to us to get the hype meter sky rocketing through the roof.. wonder as a company if they'll ever recover from this?

[DarthJay]

What if you went to a movie that was advertised as being the latest Pixar film of greatness and you get to the end and it is hardcore porn? Or how about you go see a horror movie and the last 10 minutes is Dora the Explorer?

There is a responsibility in advertising. It's the reason a car dealership can't say their vehicle has a V6 engine in it because they drew a V6 on it with a marker.

And this wasn't "legal action." A simple Google search of the ASA tells you "The ASA is the UK's independent regulator of advertising across all media."

So it sounds like to me, they got complaints and they did their job. Bioware deserves all the flak in the world over this.

[Flewid638]

And the ending of Mass Effect was neither porn nor Dora the Explorer. It was Mass Effect. There was nothing NON Mass Effect about the ending. Not liking a product and buying a falsely adverised one are two different things.

Nothing was fasley advertised. Your example is epic failure. Dont ever become a lawyer.

”I read a book and I didnt like how the main character dies in the end. Lets sue the author.”

Reeeeeee taaaaaaaaaard.

[DarthJay]

@CDzNutts Way to miss the point completely. I'd waste my time in breaking it down for you, but it's clear you are incapable of comprehending simple English. Thanks for playing, though.

[Blackpool]

But games cost 60$ plus preorders and special editions

[jamesensor]

Seems like most of the comments above are corporate sympathizers. Well done! Now, right to business.. sure, corporate can bypass and win the leading-to-what-concept by literally decomposing every single word and say that "it will change your life" has millions of meanings. One can cross the right leg over the other, or simply the opposite and say "there you go, your life is changed!" in that plain aspect and go about giving random explanations just like what ATA wrote: they acknowledge, we acknowledge, you acknowledge and blablabla so therefore is acknowledged. Result: no cookie for anyone and corporate gets away with it. If people start going for the "see to believe" attitude, things would work far different, and that's where most people fail to do and end up posing as fools.. Corporate will always profit from people's ignorance. Funny thing though some people here go for the "STFU and take it up the a** and get used to it! This is how the world rolls!!!". How childish... please try to keep a respectful and rational discussion on topics please.

[vortis]

Well said. Bubbles.

I'm so tired of the corporate apologists.

Guys, guess what? THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU.

They'll continue to strip away rights, continue to gimp the quality of their products and continue to wallet-rape consumers any and every chance they get.

I'm glad people stood up against the ending because there are a lot of bad practices going on that are being left unchallenged.

[TrueGaming]

IMO I think that people should be entitled to a refund within 7 days... but the problem with that is stores would get a giant bump in used games over new games & then companies wouldn't be able to charge the $10-$15 as they can with new copies, they'd take a small loss or gain with online passes etc etc. But honestly petitioning for an ending??? Now we all know you can always RENT before you buy to avoid the loss of $60... ( IMO the only petition that should happen is the Pacquiao VS Bradley fight because Manny won that by a landslide )I'm glad the devs heard the consumers & made changes and stated they're gonna "fix" it though & not all devs listen that actively if you think about it. IMO this is a waste of time come to think of it ( yes even I wasted my time to comment but hey, I'm bored) because you cant change everybodies mind on how they're gonna feel about "getting ripped off" but in this instance you could've avoided the bs by renting first or buying later or relying based off a majority of reviews if that's your thing... LONG LIVE GAMING

[Rock_On_PS4]

Being a console fan boy usually means only owning one console system and hating on the others by making stuff up. However I own a X360 and a PS3, I own more games on my X360 than the PS3 and thus I am a X360 fan boy. I even bought a second X360 because my launch one was burnt out.

I was surprised that Mass Effect 2 came out a year later on the PS3 despite ME not being ported over to the PS3. Probably a bit too late. ME2 surprisingly performed better on the PS3 than on the X360. A year longer helped to get the game to run smoothly on the PS3. Choppy frame rates, glitches and screen tearing plagued ME on both X360 and PC.

With ME3 there has been numerous analysis conducted based on the demos and the retail copies that indicate that X360 frame rates are considerably a lot better than the stuttering PS3 frame rates that barely manage 30FPS. A patch update in the future should help smooth out the PS3 frame rates.

I own ME2 on the X360 and the GOTY edition of ME2 on the PS3. ME2 is a much better game than ME3 and the Gamerankings/metacritic scores clearly reflects that.

[CJQNSNYC]

The problem with this whole fiasco is the damage to Bioware's once sterling reputation.

Gone are the days that even the mention of a new Bioware game would generate "mass" excitement. With SWTOR losing a good portion of it's subscriber base and the Dragon Age series having a big question mark next to it, I wonder if they will ever regain what they now seemingly took for granted?

Only time will tell......

[DeadlyFire]

Bioware invented the Mass Effect Series, and Dragon Age.

EA took both games and ran them into the ground. Mass Effect 2 and 3 were damn good until the ending happened. Its like mind rape. You expect so much after a 3 game build up and you get 1 choice with a magic child that is born out of nowhere and gives you the ability to breath in the vacuum of space.

Dragon Age 2 EA clearly took over and changed the entire concept. Game turned out so-so instead of awesome.

CD Project Red is the next Bioware. Forget about EA-Bioware

A few developers from Bioware are now at a studio called Stoic.

[sjaakiejj]

""One thing we commonly see is when fans don't like something we do, they put in the comments, 'Oh those EA guys, they're making BioWare do...' And I always chuckle because we are EA, we're BioWare - we're both, and we still have huge autonomy in terms of what we do," Greg Zeschuk told us.
"We're not being forced to do anything or told to do anything. We make the decisions. We take input.
"It's just funny when people say that, because it's not actually remotely true.""

http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

Perhaps it's time to start putting the blame on Bioware, instead of on the company that never touched the game.

[vortis]

@sjaakiejj

So they want us to hate them? Really? That's so much BS.

They should have kept their mouths shut, a lot of people would have sympathized with BioWare and blamed EA to their grave, but now it's like BioWare shot a child in the face and said "Nope, EA didn't make us do it, we did it all on our own. Hate us for it. It's all right."

[MacDonagh]

¬_¬ There's nothing to be done. Despite the consistent lying that was done to boost sales of the game, (16 different endings, charging for an integral character in the game, how it won't be an ABC ending etc) the ASA still ruled in favour of EA. The only thing that saved EA was that they weren't charging for their recent DLC packs due to the level of outrage at the whole debacle.

Doesn't matter anymore. The situation has become irredeemable thanks to the actions of EA/Bioware. People will not forget what they did.

[jamesensor]

And I haven't ever played me3 but I did see what they did to Dragon Age 2 (Fans of Origins myself). They destroyed the franchising... After all the circus done online with ME3 and its attrition caused by fans and media, they stepped back and truly entered PR mode. Now they've even been saying that "they'll listen to fans", trying to create some bond of trust, and they're already doing it with Dragon Age 3. If people raise awareness, instead of buying the game blindly based on advertising, perhaps they should research about the game before buying. Looking at gameplay videos, low rate reviews (to see what's bad about the game instead of the 9/10's), metacritic, etc. About ME3 endings.. if you people read as much as I did in bioware's social forum, there were many suggestions to the endings that made for rational and great finales.. Way much better than blue, green, red and dying in all three.

[Fuzrum]

In the clear? Hardly. Not with their fans.

But yes...this formal investigation was way over the top.