Sinking BioWare’s Battleship, One Leak at a Time

(I’m going to tell you right now, the title of this post is way cooler than anything else in it.)

It’s been an eventful few days for Mass Effect fans. (For the Mass Effect 3 team, “agonizing” is probably a better term than “eventful”.)

Someone at Microsoft apparently pressed a wrong button on Friday, releasing what was supposed to be a super secret internal Mass Effect 3 Beta to the  wrong testers. People currently beta-testing the new Xbox dashboard found themselves able to download and play a version of the ME3 beta in both single player and multiplayer modes. From what I understand it was only live for about 30 minutes before Microsoft sent out a kill code, but by then the damage had been done.

Screenshots and videos of the beta were everywhere over the weekend. Fortunately the information that had been released was relatively devoid of any significant plot information. While the footage that I saw added to my excitement for the March release, I didn’t feel any real damage was done. (Yes, I watched some of it. What? I’m not made of stone.)

I found the leaked beta footage fascinating. I loved seeing the unfinished product, with all of its glitches, placeholder dialogue, and missing textures and animations.  It was like seeing a snapshot of one of the stages a game goes through before I get my greedy hands on the finished product. I adore stuff like that.

I know that the folks at BioWare were Very Very Unhappy that the internal beta was released to the public, but I figured it would blow over, no real harm done.

No such luck. Again, from what I can understand (from very limited research- I’m trying desperately to keep from getting spoiled myself!) there were files included within the beta that outlined the plot of ME3 in its entirety, including developer commentary.

I’m going to say right now, I don’t endorse anyone going to look for or reading these files; I know it can be tempting but I’m hoping you can all control your lustful Mass Effect urges. BioWare confirms the files exist, but says that they were from almost a year ago and don’t reflect the final state of the game.

I’ve also read that the information only follow one particular set of decisions without taking imports into account. Assuming you are importing from Mass Effect 2, these leaks don’t necessarily reflect what your game is going to be like. (On top of that, why would you want to damage what is promising to be an absolutely epic game experience?)

I’m disturbed by this, because this plot information does not yet belong to the public and never should have been made public. This is no longer a situation where no real harm was done; this is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing.

I feel terrible for the devs, who have gone to great lengths during the development of the game to keep the plotline under wraps, only to have it stolen. I really appreciated their efforts to keep the story a surprise, and I imagine they must be feeling several shades of not-good right now.

Adding insult to injury, some trollish souls decided the only thing to do with the leaked information was to use it to ninja spoil members of the BioWare Social Network forums. Threads were created with spoilers in the title, or misleading titles and links that lead to the Mass Effect 3 plot information.

It’s one thing to spoil a story for yourself, but it takes a special kind of asstroll to force spoilers on others without their knowledge or consent. I do not approve of these Renegade actions.

Even Batarians wouldn’t stoop that low.

(I have not forgotten or overlooked the fact that this leak could effect eventual game sales; I don’t know enough about game sales and marketing to have any idea what kind of impact this might have. I suspect that most of the people who would buy this game are not on sites like Tumblr and BSN and will hopefully miss this mess altogether, but I couldn’t say for sure.)