While evergreen to say that Mass Effect fans are having a rough go, it’s hard to imagine a worse couple of weeks. Earlier in the month, EA announced that they were closing BioWare, extinguishing any hope for a new entry along with it. Its most impassioned players have been incensed, to say the least, as one Reddit user stumbled across incidents of vandalism at one of the publisher’s offices.
“I stumbled upon the EA offices in Madrid as I was leaving a movie theater,” posted Reddit user Ok_Link9625, “saw this on the floor to the entrance and on the wall in front of the offices.”
Scrawled in spray paint in front of the Madrid office’s front gate and along one wall reads “SAVE MASS EFFECT.” It’s an escalation in efforts to salvage the beloved series from an unceremonious end. A few days earlier, a number of fans banded together to purchase a 15 second ad spot in Times Square. This is all coupled by a petition on Change demanding that EA continue developing games in the series, with or without BioWare’s involvement. As of this writing, the petition has amassed well over a quarter million signatures. The Spanish office itself largely works on various EA Sports titles.
Fans are ultimately torn between these escalating tactics, whether it’s a ‘bad look’ for the community or simply a wasted effort. While the righteous indignation is understandable, it’s unlikely any of this will reverse course at the company. Amid their controversial acquisition from a coalition of Saudi and Jared Kushner-affiliated firms, Jason Schreier’s sources told him EA decided to abandon Mass Effect in favor of safer Star Wars tie-ins, such as Battlefront 3. EA in general is not known for caretaking their legacy franchises or studios, with BioWare in particular at the center of numerous labor disputes.
Even if these campaigns did catch an executive’s ear, it wouldn’t change the fact that EA shuttered the studio responsible for the series. The key damage has been done. Avi Lewis, the recently elected leader of the Canadian federal New Democratic Party, said that stricter policy should be implemented to keep private equity from mulching Canadian studios, going so far to say that BioWare staff should receive federal funding to rebuild the studio for themselves.
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