Bio-hazardous

EDIT: And now it looks like they put SecuROM in the game without telling anyone. Namely, people for whom that sort of thing is a huge turnoff(like say, anyone who had the misfortune of buying Bioshock for the PC). People kind of like to know beforehand if you're going to include incompetent Digital Rights Management software that seriously fucks with your operating system in the name of fighting "piracy".

Although that's probably more EA than Bioware, still.

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Dragon Age 2 came out. I've already had three people tell me, unprovoked, that it's unplayable dreck. Unsurprisingly, major game websites are lapping it up anyway. On Metacritic, however, the highest user review score was given by, wait for it...

A Bioware employee. But he didn't mention the part where he WORKS FOR THE COMPANY HE'S SUPPOSEDLY GIVING AN IMPARTIAL REVIEW FOR. And it reads like the phoniest of press-releases.

I was mildly curious about this game. This is the straw, for me. Yes, this matters. They've pissed in the pool, and now it's not safe to swim in anymore. They obviously don't believe in the product they developed and shipped in less than a year, and which people are going out of their way to tell me is garbage. The last time a company did that, we got Left 4 Dead 2. I won't make that mistake again.

It's too bad. I was looking forward to Mass Effect 3. On the plus side, I don't have to worry about one lost sale mattering in the end. "The Old Republic" Star Wars MMO they're working on is the most expensive game in human history, and I have no reason to believe it's going to do anything but bankrupt these guys. Not in a world where World of Warcraft still has that market cornered in an alley. Sometimes the bigger they are, the longer they stay standing. Look at any CEO that's ever done anything that would have any other schmuck landed in a state prison.

Here's a great comment from that Reddit article, by "Zephir62" that I think sums up how and why shit like this is allowed to happen:

All developers are required to pimp their own release as much as possible... as the bigger the hit a game is, the better it looks on your resume and paycheck. If you make a highly hyped game and it flops, companies will specifically NOT hire you and throw your resume in the trash if you list it on there. Also, if you are out of the market for over 2 years, you're experience and portfolio is generally void due to the massive amounts of changes in methodologies within the industry. So if you work for for the entire game's development cycle and it's sales and reviews are horrible, you will essentially have to spend a month or two updating your portfolio to match new industry standards without having any kind of income. No one would want this to happen to themselves, so you end up seeing tactics like the OP coming about to help ensure positive acclaim for a game that is also receiving a lot of flak.

END OF LINE

~A.H.