I’ve very recently found out that the sale of Electronic Arts to a group of buyers has been finalised. I guess I hoped, with my extreme naivety in matters that involve money I can’t even conceive of, that it wouldn’t actually be completed. The group of buyers are Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) with 93.4%, Silver Lake that hold 5.5% and Affinity Partners with 1.1%.

This has made me extremely sad and left me with a bit of a problem when it comes to the game that was EXTREMELY significant to me for a large portion of my life. It has been a special interest ever since the first time I laid eyes on it. If you’ve read my blog, you probably already know what the game is because I’ve mentioned it countless times. But if you’re new here, it was Mass Effect.

This buyout has given me a moral dilemma not totally unlike facing a sentient Reaper on Virmire: What I can personally do to cause the least amount of damage to others – and myself – while still honouring the game that changed the very fabric of who I am as a person? This is something that, the way I played Shepard – my personal head canon if you will – she would want me to fight.

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Why Mass Effect Matters to Me So Much

I used to watch a lot of YouTube gaming channels back when gaming was HUGE on YouTube. YouTube didn’t used to recommend everything to you then, you actually had to know what you were looking for but I’d somehow followed all of The Creatures. Kootra was a massive Mass Effect fan, and one day I watched a video from his “Adventures of Creature Shepard” series, and I instantly fell in love with the game.

In fact, I stopped watching it because I didn’t want to see any more spoilers and immediately purchased Mass Effect 1 and 2 on eBay. The video was uploaded 15 years ago.

My son was 6 at the time and, despite what people say, when they’re in bed you have a surprising amount of free time as a single mum. I spent mine playing video games on my Xbox 360. Before Mass Effect, I was mostly playing Call of Duty multiplayer and Zombies. I actually made a few gaming friends playing multiplayer games who were parents too. It was really fun, and I felt less alone.

To say I was hooked with Mass Effect as soon as I put the disc in is an understatement. It instantly became a huge part of my life. So huge, in fact, I can recite a lot of the codex entries off by heart. I also know the scripts of all three games off by heart. My son laughs because I also imitate all the sound effects just before they come on screen.

Memories of my son growing up are tied up in it too, as he grew he started watching me play, and said I had a “Mass Effect face” whenever I played it. He made comics of me as Commander Shepard, and drew my adventures in the game. He seemed to love being a part of my inner world.

Mass Effect 3 even helped me through my first ED recovery, and I’m not sure I realised at the time just how much it helped me get through it. I related fighting giant Reapers and indoctrination to how it felt to fight my ED. Fighting them both felt so similarly all-encompassing, and absolutely so enormous that they often felt unwinnable.

At the same time as fighting them physically, Reaper indoctrination can corrupt your thoughts and make them feel like your own. So you’re not just fighting giant sentient machines with Thanix Cannons, you are fighting to remain the very fabric of who you are. Yet somehow Shepard does win, and at the same time so did I. I fought those ED Reapers straight back to dark space for the next 12 years.

My flat has multiple shrines to Mass Effect, my wardrobe is full of N7 clothes, there’s a giant Normandy SR-2 canvas as soon as you walk through my front door. I’ve drawn countless pieces of fan art that fill multiple sketchbooks and the walls of my flat. I even have Mass Effect drinking glasses.

Mass Effect is as much a part of my personality as my tendency to have impulsive ideas of flat modification at 11pm at night.

This situation reminds me of the devastation I felt when my Xbox 360 had the dreaded Red Ring of Death and I’d lost all my saves. Except, this time I haven’t lost Shepard. I’ve instead been trying to decide if my values will let me play as her on my screen again.

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The Fall of EA

If you’re a Mass Effect fan, you may be wondering why I keep referring to the trilogy and haven’t mentioned Mass Effect Andromeda. The fall of EA, in my opinion, happened long before the buyout.

Even with Mass Effect 3, I started noticing a change with how EA operates. There was the outrage and need for the Extended Cut endings, the microtransactions in multiplayer and the way it felt rushed. Even now, with the Legendary Edition, 3 feels completely different from how well rounded and complete Mass Effect 2 is.

Mass Effect Andromeda, however, well… I’ll say one thing positive about it, it made me appreciate Mass Effect 3 far more for not being anywhere near as bad as the completely abandoned mess Andromeda is. The game that requires, “Oh you wanted more of the story? Maybe to see the fate of the Quarian Ark? Well there’s this book you can read but otherwise there will be no further content for the game”. My face also got tired.

However, if I could pick any game that perfectly demonstrates how EA has become more problematic and profit driven it would be The Sims 4. I used to be a big Sims fan, I spent a lot of my teenage years onwards playing all of The Sims games. I have spent a considerable amount of time in The Sims 4, that is until I calculated how much money it would cost to own the entire DLC catalogue.

No game should EVER cost you over £1000. Not to mention, some of the DLC’s add core features that should have been in the game from the start. I paid for Seasons in The Sims 3, why do I have to pay for it again in The SIms 4? A game, a digital software that you don’t own fully, should not cost the same as the MacBook you are playing it on. Especially… when they don’t even give you matching wood furniture.

Thinking about the cost of playing The Sims 4 to both my bank balance and my values made playing The Sims 4 feel impossible. I really disagree with games turning into what feels like subscription based services. You shouldn’t have to buy the skeleton of the game, and then keep paying for it to become a full bodied game.

I think playing Cyberpunk 2077 changed my opinion on what is possible with games. Yes, they had a very problematic release – quite like Andromeda with the animations – but CD Projekt Red spent years releasing substantial free updates that fixed launch issues and added features to the base game.

They do have The Phantom Liberty expansion which costs extra, but you don’t NEED it to have a complete game (although please don’t skip it, it’s brilliant).

CD Projekt Red are a substantially smaller company than EA. Yet they didn’t require me to pay for the “Ride the Metro” kit or “Play Roach Race” kit for an additional £5 EACH.

Where exactly do these microtransactions stop, and why are they getting so much worse? There’s even the new CC market in The SIms, where they feature created content by small creators and tell you how your purchase can now support them. Except those creators receive approximately 30% of what you spend. How exactly are we supporting small creators by giving them only 30%?

I just find it so sad and frustrating. I really used to love EA games. I’ve loved Dragon Age, Battlefield 3, even Need for Speed. But now they’ve become a company Johnny Silverhand and V would team up to try to ruin for too much “corpo shit” in Cyberpunk 2077.

Committing to not buying another EA game or their additional content might feel like enough. You’re no longer giving them your money, after all. But what if, with the buyout now added on top of all of these underlying issues, it doesn’t feel like enough? What about the fact that by playing a game I bought YEARS ago, I contribute to player numbers?

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The Business of Player Numbers and Exposure

My son recently bought me a Commander Shepard figurine. I am still so VERY happy with it. It made me want to play Mass Effect again, so that evening I loaded the Legendary Edition on my Xbox. However, if you’ve read my recent posts, you might have noticed I stopped playing it and switched to Cyberpunk 2077.

Playing Mass Effect made me really uncomfortable as I had the thought, “What if my playing this shows EA that I do not care about the buyout and I give them positive metrics through being a player number?” They know how many people are playing a game at any one time. Steam even publicises player numbers which made me assume that these metrics must be important to publishers. It was something I definitely needed an answer to.

In my frantic research I found that actually, when playing an old single player game, player numbers don’t matter that much. The most significant point they matter in this scenario is around launch and immediately following it. Player numbers matter far more in multiplayer games, live service games, and games with microtransactions. So games like Battlefield and The Sims. If player numbers fall in a multiplayer game for instance, the whole system starts failing for matchmaking lobby reasons.

Learning this didn’t make me feel any better about playing Mass Effect though, because if my player activity doesn’t change from before the buyout, does it look like I care at all? Then, add on top of that the amount of exposure I give Mass Effect games when I’m playing them.

When I’m playing a game, a small part of my brain stays in the game even when I’ve shut down my Xbox. It becomes part of my language, part of my life and experiences. I sometimes make fan art and I can often be found listening to music tracks from the game. I reference it in writing FAR too many times when I know all too well many readers won’t even get the references. I compare scenes from the game to real life situations. They become part of the fabric of my life. I’ve tried NOT making Cyberpunk references but it feels impossible. It’s too perfect a comparison or a metaphor in my brain. Therefore, to not mention Mass Effect, I would have to NOT play it.

Then comes the accidental marketing and advertising that happens when you’re existing loudly on the Internet. If I’ve mentioned Mass Effect positively three separate times in a post, and add screenshots, how am I not advertising it? What if I make someone buy it now?

The chances are low but I cannot pretend that my over the top enthusiasm for the games I am passionate about have zero possibility of influencing someone. Mass Effect is an old game, but Mass Effect 5 is currently in development. What if they buy that? I find someone buying it once because of me, and therefore supporting EA’s buyers rather unbearable.

The fact that playing Mass Effect suddenly made me feel really uncomfortable was so upsetting to me. This is the game that, as I’ve said, changed my life, and now I just feel so conflicted. I guess it REALLY doesn’t help that in the game you fight an organisation known as Cerberus for committing several human rights abuses. It personally feels hypocritical to fight human rights abusers in the game and then put real world issues aside because I love this game so much. Does my nostalgia really matter more than those real world issues? I certainly don’t think so.

It’s all so very complicated though, especially with BioWare being a slightly separate entity that just so happens to be owned by EA. Bioware doesn’t own Mass Effect, EA does, and while I have empathy for the people working within a company they have little control over, for me personally, not supporting EA is a much more pressing issue.

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The Privilege of Uninstalling a Game.

After going through all of this internal conflict because of hearing the news about the buyout I have decided to not play or mention Mass Effect. I will keep the shrines in my house, I will get to keep the memories I have, but I will not contribute to furthering the goals of EA.

There will probably be grief involved, and sadness. However, it is a huge privilege to be able to make this choice. The people living under the Saudi regime do not have the same ability to opt out of a governing system. They can’t uninstall their rulers. What I feel when I imagine never playing Mass Effect again is NOTHING compared to what they feel or go through on a daily basis. My privilege means I cannot even begin to imagine what life is like there. I can only read about it on sites like Amnesty International.

What I’m doing, is only slightly more than nothing. It doesn’t make me a good person, it doesn’t help the people of Saudi Arabia, I’m just doing what I can to not make anything worse. To not make their rulers more powerful. I am one person. My one player number in Mass Effect, and mentioning it on my blog has no real influence in changing the way Saudi’s live. EA certainly wont keel over tomorrow because of it.

But imagine everyone felt that way about everything, NOTHING would ever change. Nothing changes, if nothing changes.

When people suggest boycotts of media, they aren’t telling you that you have to set fire to everything that belongs to that media. I wouldn’t suggest burning books for instance, I’ve read Fahrenheit 451 it is widely regarded as a bad move. They also aren’t claiming to be perfectly ethical people.

When I buy food, I can’t opt out of paying tax because I disagree with my governments spending. I can’t even choose where that tax goes, “Please put this towards the NHS”, they might instead further a drone program I do not agree with. But there are some lines you can draw, and media is definitely one of them, because there is always more media. While Mass Effect got me through some pretty rough times in my life, it is not the same thing as buying something I require to live. Even if it is a special interest.

I am also not telling you what to do. I guess I just hope everyone thinks about how much this media really means to them. After all, Mass Effect taught me to take a stand against issues such as this. I have been waiting for the Paragon interrupt for the EA buyout and it hasn’t come. Have I really learnt anything from Commander Shepard if I only apply those values when it suits me?

Mass Effect memories will Never Fade Away –