Child's Play Halts Retake Mass Effect Donation Drive

[Bob_Marley42]

Sad to see there are so many mongs about. I mean, I know this is the internet and all, but still.

Child's Play have certainly made the right call here - while it was lovely that people donated to charity, no matter what the reason, to have that charity become percived as something it is not because of that is understandably something to be avoided.

If nothing else some good has come out of this even if we have been forced to endure an explosion of mongism.

 

[lord.jeff]

I like Child's Play but retake Mass Effect was stupid, I can't stand the tactic it used, oh look you hate this thing, so why don't you support this unrelated thing over here, there's just no way that wouldn't come off as intently misleading.

 

[Andy Chalk]

In other words EA bitched that they were making them lose money and threatened with lawyers.

I would love to know how you reach this conclusion. Seriously.

 

[SwimmingRock]

I applaud the donators who helped raise 80,000 for children who deserve to enjoy video games as much as anyone else. If anything, you guys ARE the good ending to Mass Effect 3. Thank you.

I want to call you out for being cheesy, but you're right in a poetic kind of way. I wonder if games that were (almost) universally loved have ever accomplished something similar?

Oh, shit. Wait. I said I wouldn't post drunk anymore. Well, balls to it.

OT: No. I refuse to think about this. The stupid makes my head hurt. Then again, I've seen pictures of people paying ridiculous amounts for empty boxes of new consoles and dealt with my mothers inability to read anything on a website properly, so I'm not actually all that surprised.

 

[Alex Mac]

As much as the results of the donated money will be nothing but good, I definitely think we cannot divorce ourselves from the intention that was likely present in a lot of those donating. The campaign took one cause and subverted it for another, all the while acting as a way for many donators to to feel morally upright or argue a veneer of maturity. And that is very unfortunate.

Intentions matter. So while I commend the donations gathered, I will never be able to fully stand back and say that people were doing what they did in good faith.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I'm surprised that they didn't stop accepting these donations earlier.

 

[Icehearted]

I can't help feeling like whomever started this Retake Mass Effect thing was just trolling simple folk. Not to mention that Penny Arcade's artist (I don't know about the writer) was paid by EA to pen artwork for them.

Just saying.

 

[KeyMaster45]

While it's funny to think that some people are so enraged by the ME3 ending that they will blindly throw money at anything they assume will get it changed. I think it was despicable of the guy running the RTM to tie his retarded rage machine to the charity knowing full well (and I don't see how there's anyway he couldn't have seen people would construe it as such...unless he's just as stupid as the morons he's attracted) that people would throw money at it in some insane attempt to get the ending changed.

It's fine for people to get upset the ending wasn't what they wanted, but this bullshit has gone way too far.

Usual Disclaimers: I am not a Bioware fan, I haven't played any of the ME games, I didn't like DA:O, and I didn't buy DA2. In short, I am in no way a Bioware fanboy nor am I a fan of Bioware in any substantial capacity.

I think the exact opposite. More internet protests/whine-fests need to have a positive aspect to them, like a charity drive.

You think that sick children shouldn't reap the benefits of non-altruistic donations just because you don't like the cause? With all due respect, I think that says just as much about you as it does about the people donating.

Actually I think that it's just wrong to take advantage of people's blind rage regardless of benefits. Dishonesty is still dishonesty.

We can stand up and cheer all we want for this guy taking advantage of people's natural assumption that the donations were somehow going to produce a new ending for the game, but at the end of the day it was still a rather shady thing to do. Which is exactly why Child's Play didn't want itself associated with RTM, people were donating under the impression the money wasn't going to sick kids but to produce a new ending. Think for a second what kind of reputation that could give the charity. That they're willing to scam people out of their money, (regardless if that's what they were doing at all and if was really just a short sighted twit trying legitimize his nerd rage) if people think they're willing to do that by extension they'd begin to think if the money being given to the charity was really going towards what they said it was. It's a stain on their reputation that could be potentially disastrous in future fundraising endeavors.

So yes it's great that $80,000 was raised but I find the conditions under which the money was collected to be morally questionable, or simply flat out underhanded on the part of RTM's organizer.

 

[Swyftstar]

[Child's Play] has been asked what the goal is, and how much they need to raise in order to get the ending produced. We've also been contacted by PayPal due to a high number of people asking for their donations back. This is in addition to readers who simply couldn't understand how this was connected to Child's Play's mission. We were dealing with a lot of very confused people, more every day, and that told us we had a problem.

That alone is fucking disgusting. I cannot believe I'm a part of a community full of whiny, entitled, and egotistical assholes. For years, we've been struggling with the stigma that gamers, as a whole, are hopeless losers who are prone to violence and childish behavior, and here we are proving them right.

Penny Arcade's Child's Play (and by extension, Desert Bus) has been one of the greatest and most wholesome thing to come out of the gaming community, and has really helped quell the image that we're mindless slaves to "murder simulators", and just because a single AAA game had a sub-par ending, the gaming community managed to turn this into a fucking circus. Donate because you want to help Child's Play, not because your unwarranted self-importance demands that you somehow deserve a better ending simply because you may or may not have actually purchased the product.

I'm sick of this attitude. It needs to fucking stop. No other medium of entertainment stoops so low as to make petitions and campaigns over such trivial bullshit.

You don't see people sending death threats to Michael Bay's personal phones in response to Transformers.

You don't see people making massive online petitions to boycott Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing... or Brian Herbert's Sisterhood of Dune.

You don't see people withdrawing their donations from a food drive because they wanted a different ending to The Sopranos.

We're supposed to show the world that we're much more mature than this, and instead we're turning into another self-indulgent internet mob.

[HEADING=1]Go fuck yourselves[/HEADING]

Yes, but how do you really feel about the situation?

OT: I have avoided all of this hubbub because it seemed to be a no win argument no matter what side you were on. Can we please just let it die now? It's gotten too big, too ugly, far too much negative energy is being generated by it, nothing is going to come of it and even the one thing good that might have come out of it has been tainted by the overall negativity of the whole thing.

 

[Zeraki]

Okay, first of all.

Secondly... despite the fact that the ending made me want to OD on anti-depressants, I thought donating to a charity just to raise awareness of the ending of Mass Effect 3 was stupid. But at least the money was going to a good cause.

Unfortunately, this paints the entire gaming community in a negative light.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

I applaud the donators who helped raise 80,000 for children who deserve to enjoy video games as much as anyone else. If anything, you guys ARE the good ending to Mass Effect 3. Thank you.

I want to call you out for being cheesy, but you're right in a poetic kind of way. I wonder if games that were (almost) universally loved have ever accomplished something similar?

Oh, shit. Wait. I said I wouldn't post drunk anymore. Well, balls to it.

I'm happy being called cheesy. I'll wear that hat proudly.

 

[TheProfessor234]

It's a damn shame that even with all that money raised for charity, the only thing people are going to remember is that some few people wanted their money back.

Why must groups always be rated on the lowest common denominator? For a few moments, I thought we were taking steps forward.

 

[Elamdri]

Raise your hand if you saw this coming LIGHTYEARS away.

*Raises Hand*

 

[Revolutionary]

Oh wow a charity event stunted by idiots, what a surprise.

 

[penthesilea180]

"We have shown our sincerity and passion. We have brought positive attention to the Retake Mass Effect movement," her wrote.

I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to write "her" there. Just FYI.

OT: I was a little worried about attaching RTM to a charity drive. But, many charities partner with corporations to increase awareness about their cause and the corporations get good publicity to boot. However, I don't know how people could have mistaken 'donate to a charity' for 'buy a better ending.' That seems like they didn't read what the charity drive was for and that is their own fault.

 

[Burnhardt]

So PA is prematurely ending a charity drive... and they're doing so under the pretense that it's causing confusion (for whom, 3 or 4 people?), and because they don't like the cause. Disgusting.

Your post has made me confused.

Are you disgusted that Penny Arcade has put a stop to this because by doing this they're making it clear they aren't supporting the Retake movement, or because it was becoming more and more about drawing attention to getting a new ME3 ending rather than helping sick kids, the actual fucking point of the charity. As Tycho said in his post on the PA webiste "Child?s Play cannot be a tool to draw attention to a cause. Child?s Play must be the Cause."

While I support the Retake movement's intentions they should have never used this method, but to all those who contributed towards the $80k, knowing exactly what you were doing, all that could be said is well done.

 

[kouriichi]

HA HA! Called it. I knew right there at the beginning, the first time i read about it. I called it. I said "This is one of the worst ideas ever, and its going to be shot down."

People need to get over this. I didnt even think the ending was THAT BAD. I thought it was decent. But everyone these days feels so entitled they need to boycott and do fund raisers to have something change.

This really started to bother me after TB started to become more entitled. Ive been a fan of his for.... flying spaghetti monster knows how long?!? But recently hes been really whiny. "The FoV is slightly to small for me on PC, so no one should buy it" was his stance. Sure, i understand that some people get headaches from small FoV on PC, but that just means, GET IT FOR CONSOLE. Dont like the PC port? Get it for console. -_- Instead of costing them thousands of dollars paying workers to change 1 thing, so some entitled buttholes can be happy, just get it on console. If you have the ability to sink $2k into a PC, you can afford a console. PC wasnt $2000? Great, youve got $1000 more then the guy who put $2k into his PC. Go buy one.

All this whining as of late by the "gaming" community has done nothing but give me headaches.

But back on topic. Im glad it got shut down. Trying to bribe a corporation by saying "were doing it for children ", when really, your doing it because of selfish needs is one of the most amoral things ive ever heard of. Child's Play should refund the money of anyone who wants it returned.

 

[Estelindis]

I donated. I didn't think Penny Arcade or Child's Play was in any way associated with Retake Mass Effect 3. The idea was simply to turn our strong feelings about the ending of the game into something positive. I haven't seen anyone posting in the main thread on the Bioware forum saying that they want their money back or that they were confused about where the money was going. I'd really prefer if Tycho had given some actual numbers, e.g. "x% of the money has been returned, Y% of the money was not asked to be returned and has been donated." As it stands, he simply seems to be implying that the returns were quite high, but I haven't seen anything from the actual movement that would make me think that was the case.

 

[Toilet]

People are fucking idiots and need to read into what they are putting their money in.

Fuck everyone.

 

[dreadedcandiru99]

"We've also been contacted by PayPal due to a high number of people asking for their donations back."

What?

I want the ending fixed as much as anyone else, but this kind of shit is not helping our case. To whoever did this: thanks for making us all look like the entitled asshats IGN keeps claiming we are.