Unsatisfied with Mass Effect 3 ending, fan filed federal complaint

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El_Spiko has posted a message on Bioware’s official community site, titled “I filed an FTC complaint” where he mention that he has filed an FTC complaint against EA.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government, where their establishment is to promote consumer protection and the elimination and prevention of what regulators perceive to be harmfully anti-competitive business practices, with example of coercive monopoly.

It’s totally different damage when you take account that this is not a lawsuit but it certainly would harm the reputation of EA and Bioware in terms of their future titles.

Here’s a full statement made by El_Spiko:

Against EA. After reading through the list of promises about the ending of the game they made in their advertising campaign and PR interviews, it was clear that the product we got did not live up to any of those claims. This thread has a great compilation of their claims:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10056886

Clearly, none fo these were represented in the ending. If anyone else wishes to file a complaint (the more there are the more likely the FTC will take action) just go to FTC.gov and fill out a complaint form in the Consumer Protection section. Here’s EA HQ’s address and phone number:
209 Redwood Shores Parkway
Redwood City, CA 94065
(650) 628-1500

This is not somethign I was happy to do, but after the terrible ending that was in no way the product that had been advertised to me and the lack of any kind of response from Bioware/EA to address this, I felt it was one of my only recourses. I’ll be returning my copy of the game before the end of my 30 day return policy if the ending still hasn’t been addressed by then.

UPDATE: Filed a Better Business Bureau complaint as well. They can be found at BBB.org. The BBB will at the very least notify EA of any complaints they recieve, so every complaint filed is something that EA will hear about.

DISCLAIMER: Before you start debating how dumb I am, let me be clear. THIS IS NOT A LAWSUIT. THIS IS NOT SERIOUS LEGAL ACTION. This is a complaint about EA/Bioware’s advertising, filed with the the organizations that handle false advertising in the U.S. As EA is the publisher, they were the appropriate people to complain about. If you don’t think that exercising one of the few, civil, legal ways available to hold a company accountable is stupid or immature, that’s fine. If somehow (space magic?) they actually decided to do something other than send EA an email about it, there would be a miniscule fine, that’s it. There is no way that this could “tear bioware apart” or anything of the sort. If you still think I need to be called stupid or immature, then post away.

On a related note, Mass Effect 3 Retake Movement has clarified that they do not endorse El_Spiko’s action against EA.

Mass Effect 3 releases on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 sells 3.5 million units in the first week of launching.