The word “BioWare” does not appear in a recent Change.org petition asking EA to “save Mass Effect”, which has gained around 220,000 signatories as of writing. The nearest the petition gets is an allusion to “recent revelations” that have “cast a shadow over its future”, which is a remarkably gentle way of saying that the parent company shanked the creators to balance their books, after going into historic debt.
Still, one can hardly reproach the petition organisers for not mentioning BioWare – after all, EA announced that they were closing BioWare a whole four days ago, and the funeral baked meats must coldly furnish forth the pitchdeck. There are other videogame studios, aren’t there? Just get one of them to make the thing. Maybe Owlcat, developers of the Mass Effect-flavoured The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, who’ve shared the Change.org petition on their socials.
I’m sure the HashtagSaveMassEffect petition was written out of sincere love for an absorbingly written epic sci-fi soap opera in which a charismatic group of weirdos unpick a wonderful cosmic conspiracy. Doubtless, many recently laid-off Mass Effect devs will be touched by their enthusiasm. Doubtless, I am being a pissy old crank. Still, the officious and press-releasey, ‘gamer CEO’ language of the petition makes my skin crawl. It reads like it was written by three 12-year-old boys standing on each other’s shoulders inside a pinstripe suit.
“The decline in dedicated resources and ambiguous development plans from Electronic Arts (EA) threaten to leave this beloved series at a standstill, jeopardizing its incredible legacy,” it pines. “Fans around the globe have invested thousands of hours exploring the galaxy, forming deep connections with its multifaceted characters and compelling storylines.
“It is a franchise that has transcended the typical gamer experience, creating a community that advocates for choice, individuality, and shared adventure,” the petitioners write. “The potential cessation of new developments in this universe is a devastating prospect not only for fans but for the diversity of narrative-driven games as a whole.
“Therefore, we are urgently petitioning EA to take decisive action by committing to the continued development of Mass Effect,” it continues. “This commitment requires proper funding, adequate staffing, and time allocation to maintain and advance the high standards the franchise is known for. Alternatively, EA could consider licensing the Mass Effect intellectual property (IP) to another studio that shares the passion and vision to keep it alive and allow it to flourish anew.”
Getting a third party to make it? I’m sure the idea has never occurred to EA, and nor has it ever occurred to them that they could get a third party to make it for cheaper. Although if the testimony of former employees is any indication, it’s likely they’ll just end up sitting on the unfinished Mass Effect 5 forever.
I don’t think either the Change.org petitioner or the signatories are genuinely devoid of all sympathy for the BioWare devs who lost their jobs last week. I wish them the best getting the debt-sozzled chatbot-humpers up the ladder to keep developers in work, though I do have some words of advice: the execs will not be impressed by your homages to go-faster marketing terminology like “passion”, “vision” and the “investment” of your leisure time. They will regard this only as proof that they’ve successfully mind-fucked you into thinking like them. They will applaud your language’s tendency to hail products as eternal and workers as interchangeable.
Still, shying away from even mentioning BioWare, while freshly jettisoned devs air their abandoned plans for Mass Effect 5, is just kind of weird! If you have such a “deep connection” with these games, the least you can do is name the people who made them, and maybe talk a little about how things got this bad.
