Bizarre Bazaar–BioWare Apologizes And Loves Us All

After all my whining about BioWare and EA’s apparent snub of allowing only Americans (except those in Florida and New York) to participate in a birthday party for the Mass Effect developer, we have an official apology, reason, and reparations.

Not surprisingly, it seems that a last-minute check of international contest regulations revealed that the rules aren’t the same in every country. So, rather than wait to launch the big BioWare celebration for all countries in unison, the company made the faux pas of singling out just one market for all the fun. It left the BioWare fan community steamed and the company on its heels forced to make good… and fast.

With today’s announcement, BioWare is making good by showing remorse and promising to bring the 15th anniversary celebration to all its fans in the very near future. No more details beyond that, but, in this case, a fast fess-up was exactly the right thing to do. BioWare’s statement appears after the break:

We recognize that BioWare has a global community, and the Bazaar this week was originally intended to be an international event to reflect our truly global fanbase. Unfortunately, we encountered some last-minute legal complications around how contests can be structured in different parts of the world that prevented us from including all territories in this first event, even though that was our original goal. And for that, we sincerely apologize – our goal with this sort of celebration is to show all our fans worldwide how much we appreciate your support!

BioWare definitely really values all members of our world-wide Community, no matter where you live. Accordingly, in the coming weeks, we will be announcing details about future events specifically for fans living in those territories which were excluded from participating in the first BioWare Bazaar. The future events will be a bit different from the first Bazaar in how they’re set up and structured, but our goal is to feature the same caliber of awesome prizes and great BioWare collectibles. We’ll announce more details in the coming weeks.

Clearly a mistake was made, but the company recovered in good form. Fan communities are powerful groups and their outrage put BioWare and EA on notice. While some people may still hold a grudge by being originally left out of the festivities, this error in marketing judgement will likely only be a blip on the radar.

[via Examiner]