Retake Mass Effect 3 Fundraiser Ended Due To Corporate Politics

Earlier we reported on the fundraiser to change Mass Effect 3's ending, and how it was shutdown because too many gamers didn't understand what the money was being used for or where it was going. However, that is not true and new information actually details that it was actually ended due to corporate politics.

Originally, Child's Play project manager Jamie Dillion mentioned that...

"While we did receive some negative mail regarding the drive, I can assure you our decision was not about bowing to pressure from anyone- corporate, individual, or otherwise,“The real concern on our end was the slippery slope that attaching causes to fundraising for Child’s Play can create. While RME had the best of intentions and was overwhelmingly generous, it shed light on an issue that we needed to address. It pointed out a dangerous precedent for others to use the charity for agendas we clearly do not support.“We’re taking a step back and looking at our policies to see what we can do to still appreciate and support the community while avoiding implications of Child’s Play being attached to other causes.”

Child's Play is overseen by the same folks who run Penny Arcade, and originally word spread around that gamers were misinformed about the charity drive to have the ending changed for Mass Effect 3, hence Penny Arcade had the whole thing shutdown, as reported by our own site and other sites like Digital Spy.

In actuality, Forbes reached out to Jamie Dillion and received a much clearer response to the situation, detailed as follows...

“It’s true that we received some negative feedback about the RTM fundraiser, but the real issue that it brought to light was our policy surrounding attaching other, unrelated causes to child’s play. What RTM was doing was very cool and an amazing show what an active community can do, but we were concerned about the slippery slope. For instance, if someone were to create a “support (insert cause X) by donating to child’s play,” you can see how this could cause issues for us.So our discussion with the RTM folks had little to do with the specifics of their cause, but rather a policy issue we needed to address around fundraisers in general.”

This sort of coincides with what Dillion expressed on Reddit. The issue of gamers being misinformed about the drive actually accounted for a very small percentage of donaters and was not the actual cause for the drive to wind down to an end.

The real issue at hand was that this had more to do with the politics surrounding the way Child's Play operates and the issue of using it to fuel a separate campaign, and not necessarily that people didn't understand what they were donating to. In result of this situation Child's Play has updated their company policies regarding the way charity fundraisers are handled.

Retake Mass Effect is still an active group. However, they are no longer attached to the Child's Play charity. You can learn more about what the movement is about on their Official Facebook Page.