Update From the Editor-in-Chief : APRIL FOOLS from Cheat Code Central! Did we fool you?
I can’t believe it. This morning, BioWare shocked the world with an announcement that could change AAA video game development forever. Normally, when a huge game with a multi-million-dollar budget and several years of development time ships with embarrassing technical issues, the developer just sort of stays quiet, throws a PR person under a bus, and maybe makes a patch or two if the cigar-chomping manifestations of late capitalism in charge at the publisher lets them.
But not BioWare, the company on the receiving end of some of the worst end of equally embarrassing gamer behavior. No, BioWare has decided to take it no longer, effectively giving the Mad Online Gamer community a hefty, long-deserved middle finger.
The DIY DLC Pack is the most brilliant and deserved backhand to Internet bullies in video game history. Remember when BioWare kowtowed to angry, harassment-fueled losers and altered the ending to Mass Effect 3 ? Those days are over. Now BioWare is BioWon’t, and if any complainers want to take their time to stop sending gross emails to women who don’t even work for the company anymore and put their money where their mouth is, well they can.
Want to spend $50 to take a swing at animating Mass Effect: Andromeda yourself? Go for it. Purchase and download the DIY Pack and get your greasy little fingers under the hood. All the armchair developers and animators across worldwide social media can finally figure out just how easy it is to fix these kinds of problems, just like they’ve insisted they are since the early days of electronic entertainment.
The second part of the story, the content submissions, add even more heat to the BioWare burn. Imagine how great it will feel for the Mass Effect: Andromeda team at BioWare to go through all the input from all the gullible doofuses angry enough to plunk down wads of cash on development tools they have no experience with and laugh at their crappy “fixes” for days on end. The schadenfreude will course through the BioWare office like a volcanic river made of chocolate and happiness.
But what if some fans take it to heart and do something interesting with the DIY Pack? What if some aspiring animator who had nothing to do with the screaming neanderthals who hang out on message boards and Twitter plunks down their cash and does something awesome with even the most banal of side quest conversations? Perhaps it could be a career-making moment for a hungry, young artist, who could go on to be the next target for Internet hate-mongering.
You know, it’s amazing people even bother working on video games the way gamers treat them sometimes.
Anyway, the DIY Pack will be available late April at a $49.99 price point. When it launches, please come to Cheat Code Central and use our affiliate link to make a purchase. Our cut of the Mass Effect: Andromeda review money for the Internet Media Collusion Initiative was a bit on the low side, so we had to strike up a new marketing deal with EA to make ends meet. Thanks!