Saying that changing a product under fan reaction would somehow "Violate" it as art would mean that BioWare are, in fact, incapable of producing art. Since their artistic vision factors in the reaction of their audience.
Therefore, since they cannot produce art but have attempted to and have, in fact, changed it based on outside reaction (Because good artists NEVER listen to critique), they have inadvertently created a rip in space time that will rewind their respective medium one decade and the cycle will begin again so that the new organ- artists can be harvested by the fans and preserved in fan-fic form.
Bob now has 3 options
1) Destroy all fans, including critics. This will ultimately result in artists becoming fans of other artists, and new fans will thus be created.
2) Control the fans to ensure that they never attempt to hurt the artists with their stupid, smelly ideas ever again. This will result in Bob becoming a Mass Effect fan, and he too will eventually grow to despise the ending and attempt to change it himself, thus the industry will be destroyed. Because that's how multi-million dollar corporations work, when someone changes something in one of their products they just kind of crash and burn into obscurity and everyone starts hating them and FOX news and other associated idiots (And therefore everybody who matters) refuses to take them seriously
3) Fuse all artists and fans together... somehow. That way nobody can demand that art be changed because they themselves are all artists, and therefore totally identical and at complete peace, the artists that demanded Mass Effect 3 be changed before don't count LALALALA everything is happy forever!
But to assert such a thing would make you seem close-minded and entrenched in binary, single minded ideas that circle themselves more then marry-go-rounds. Glad nobody's doing that
I think the thing people aren't getting is that while games are defiantly art (By dictionary definition they factually are), they're not like any other work of art, and we shouldn't assume that they function the same way.
"To assume all races are like your own is racist" - Legion, Mass Effect 2
Even though other industries all have self destruct buttons that go off when something is changed after the magical time known as public release (Which NEVER happens, EVER!), games might not. This is why films and books are such underground and interdependently funded works, because corporations and sales projections have no hand in them whatsoever. If they did they would be rewinded so much that they would simply cease to exist. Oh the things they can teach us!
In all seriousness, art doesn't just die for no apparent reason when it gets changed. To suggest that art, literally defined as a product of human creativity, just ceases to be when someone else has a hand in it is totally arbitrary. What's even more arbitrary is to suggest that the entire industry will just change it's game plan because of this particular indecent. It's happened before, and not just in gaming. People might be more vocal this time but the fact remains that no one can force BioWare to do anything. The final say still rests where it always has. Everyone else in the industry will go about their business, fans will keep buying, critics will keep prophesying doom, and games will be no closer to or further from receiving the respect they deserve.
I doubt even BioWare will change when the smoke clears, if they really believe in themselves as artists, it's going to take more then one mistake, some lost fans, and an imaginary "Death of all art!" to stop them.
If that's all it takes they can't care that much.