Careful, Modding Mass Effect 3 Gets You Banned From Origin

[amycus]

From Gamebanshee:

We've seen a fairly significant number of fan-created modifications for Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 over the years, but unfortunately BioWare has determined that they don't want fans to tinker with any such modifications on Mass Effect 3. In fact, modifying even a single file of your Mass Effect 3 installation, even if it only applies to the single player campaign, will get your account banned from Origin. I'll let BioWare's Thomas Abram sum it up:

To confirm, YES you will be banned if Origin picks up that you modified SP which it scans for on ME3 launch.

He then locked the thread, so you'll have to take any complaints you might have elsewhere. Thanks for the tip, Garriath.

 

Still likely due to the addition of multiplayer (cant image why else they would care, when they allow it for their other games). I don't have ME3, but I sure hope that this won't apply to any other future Bioware games...

[JimboUK]

How far do EA have to push people before they say enough is enough? people must be off their heads buying Origin games when EA don't think twice about taking away games people have paid for.

[RitualBlack]

I think its a bit silly how the customer is treated. I try as hard as possible to avoid all recent EA/Activision/Ubisoft titles. I tried origin and didn't like it at all so I removed it, and Ubisofts DRM makes their games pretty much unplayable (Learned the hard way with From Dust, what a waste of $15 that was). Activision hasn't released a decent title in years (maybe with the exception of what Raven has produced) so I don't buy any of their stuff :tongue: . I love steam for allowing people to mess with what they download. Steam downloaded bethesda games all allow mods, and my GTA4 has been so altered that it doesn't even use the steam platform to launch anymore :laugh:, which needs to be done to run the steam copy of GTA4 with icenhancer, and they promote it on the steam news. The fact Origin run a scan to make sure you don't do play with their files it is disgusting. Steam is not amazing with the platform being a constant DRM but at least they have offline mode, automatic game updates, good deals and don't assume the customer is trying to do something malicious. That makes them pretty good in my books.

 

A funny article about how much Ubisoft trusts their PC market can be found here . They say '95% of our consumers will pirate the game' so they are making a free to play title because that apparently is what we are asking for :facepalm: .

 

At least there will always be indie games and CD classics :sweat: .

 

*edit*

(ohhh, I hit post 1000!)

[Handofbane]

How far to EA have to push people before they say enough is enough? people must be off their heads buying Origin games when EA don't think twice about taking away games people have paid for.

Funny related bit - folks are saying "enough is enough" right now. The Consumerist has had a bracketed series of polls to determine the "Worst Company in America", narrowing from about 32 down to 1, with the finals taking place literally the past two days. EA has taken first place over Bank of America, with roughly 64% of the vote. They have beaten out Sallie Mae (responsible for much of the housing crash), Paypal, Walmart, Sony, Apple, Facebook, and AT&T among many others to earn that "honor".

 

That said, while I can understand some companies not wanting modded games connecting to their online servers, banning full access to accounts of single player games because of it is NOT the way to go about it. Not even Valve does that when folks get caught cheating/using hacks on VAC protected servers, they simply block you from those multiplayer servers.

[Fonger]

The Consumerist has had a bracketed series of polls to determine the "Worst Company in America", narrowing from about 32 down to 1, with the finals taking place literally the past two days. EA has taken first place over Bank of America, with roughly 64% of the vote. They have beaten out Sallie Mae (responsible for much of the housing crash), Paypal, Walmart, Sony, Apple, Facebook, and AT&T among many others to earn that "honor".

EA beat Walmart

 

something to brag about

[thecrazydudesrd]

It's a shame that they don't want to allow for personal modification. But it's their intelectual property, they can do with it what they please... (But I believe they will end up eating it in the end) Edited April 4, 2012 by thecrazydudesrd

[hector530]

I remember reading a post by bioware in their forums saying they do not ban modding unless it affects multi player

[firzen2]

mass effect 3 is good, and i recently found an ios game called mass effect infiltrator http://www.dotmmo.com/mass-effect-infiltrator-7290.html Edited April 5, 2012 by firzen2

[amycus]

I remember reading a post by bioware in their forums saying they do not ban modding unless it affects multi player

It seems like they corrected themselves later:

Thomas Abram wrote...

 

To clarify,

 

Scylla was

correct and I was correct. Scylla's answer was more broadly based in

that if you modify your SP and it has no game changing effects to

your/others multiplayer experience (say for example, granting you x

amount of credits or making a weapon x times more powerful) then there

is no problem with this. My answer was poorly worded and I apologize for

that - I was aiming to answer a couple questions I had received via PM

(the same two questions from many different users) as well as support

what Scylla said.

 

As mentioned by Scylla, you will not be banned

for modifying your files *unless (and this is where my intention was)

they give you an unfair advantage in any multiplayer aspect of the

game.

 

Here is the original thread: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/344/index/9917845/2#10648995

[bben46]

It's official, On the Consumerist website http://consumerist.com/ EA beat out Bank of America in the final match up to become the worst company in America.

 

Personally I think that gamers stuffed the ballot box. For a game company, even one as bad as EA is becoming, to beat out a company that has gotten a reputation for ruining peoples lives in their greed. Things like foreclosing on houses that they don't even own the mortgage to and when called on it "Whoops, sorry" and expect the people they just kicked out of their paid off home, tossed their furniture and possessions in the street and ruined their good credit to accept nothing but a weak apology - they only got second place - for the second year in a row. :whistling: