Mass Effect 3 crooks trick gamers with fake 'alternate ending'
Bioware to cough actual alternate finish next month
Scammers are targeting gamers left unsatisfied by the controversial ending of popular video game Mass Effect 3.
Gamers dissatisfied by the conclusion of the recently released final chapter of the Mass Effect trilogy of video games, which completes the story of main character Commander Shepard, are invited to download an "alternative ending".
The links lead to download files that invite marks to complete a worthless survey designed to harvest personal information from gamers. Promises that the survey allows users to obtain a password supposedly needed to unlock the downloaded zip file and get at an alternative ME3 ending file are cobblers. In reality no content related to Mass Effect 3 or video-gaming more generally is on offer and the whole approach is simply designed to squeeze affiliate marketing money from dodgy marketing firms at the expense of gamers.
The scam was spotted by Chris Boyd, a security consultant at GFI Software, who warns gamers to be aware of this and similar scams they may encounter when they search for "better" endings to the game.
Game publishers Bioware are due to release an officially sanctioned alternative ending to the game in April.
Survey scammers have targeted video game enthusiasts in the past, normally in the run-up to an eagerly anticipated release. The Mass Effect 3 scam is a slight variant of the same basic approach because it latches onto a newsworthy controversy about an already-released title, rather than pent-up demand. As such, the approach is arguably more plausible and more likely to attract a mass of victims.
Mass Effect is a action-based role-playing game. Gameplay in Mass Effect 3 is influenced by decisions made in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. However the current ending of Mass Effect 3 is not much affected by a player's decisions during the preceding games, hence the controversy. ®
COMMENTS
Just be on the lookout for another scam in a few months
A company called "EA" will be selling a "DLC" pack to fix something that was designed broken. Do not be fooled, do not give these scammers your money, and phone the police.
Re: Agreed
<spoiler>i agree with this request for spoiler tags</spoiler>
at the very least, perhaps a way to make text white so that you need to highlight it to view it, that would work just as well, but there must be a fairly simple piece of css/js tricky that could be done, no?
Ummm
"Game publishers Bioware are due to release an officially sanctioned alternative ending to the game in April.
[citation needed] As far as I am aware there's no such commitment.
Just as long as I can still use scam Mass Effect 3 owners....
With the promise of a "cow level"!!
"Game publishers Bioware are due to release an officially sanctioned alternative ending to the game in April."
That seems to be an overly positive spin on the old paraphrasing. Muzyka said they were working on 'content initiatives' and there would be more news in April, that's all.
