BioWare on Sunday denied that portions of a downloadable content (DLC) pack for Mass Effect 3 was intentionally removed from the game for financial gain.
DLCs are game add-ons that players purchase to enhance their experience. But when a hacker revealed that BioWare might have stripped out portions of Mass Effect 3 in order to sell it as a DLC and make some extra cash, the gaming community was not pleased.
In an extended Twitter post, Mike Gamble, a Mass Effect producer at BioWare, said the DLC, dubbed "From Ashes," was developed during the months-long period of bug fixing and certification for the full Mass Effect 3.
"The intent [was] to finish production on ['From Ashes'] long after ME3 was out of our hands as a dev team," Gamble wrote.
Gamble contended that it was impossible to develop the game and the DLC independently, so some crossover is natural.
"As we've mentioned before, that character has to be planned and the framework has to be established ahead of time for us to build off of with the DLC module," he wrote. "You may have seen a similar framework developed in ME2 for the Zaeed and Kasumi characters. We wanted Javik to be a fully featured squad member, with deep dialogue throughout the game – and we needed him to be accessible via the character selection GUI (which you cannot simply 'overwrite' with DLC)."
As a result, "certain elements of the Javik appearance and some of the VO needed to be included on the disc," Gamble continued. "That is a fact. But that doesn't mean the content was created, and then removed. It is a necessity of adding a rich character presence in our game."
That addition is over 600MB and includes the mission itself, the cinematic flashback moments, the cinematic dialogue interactions with Javik, his weapon, and the appearances for squad members, which Gamble said is "everything that makes the adventure a cohesive experience."
Mass Effect 3 went on sale Tuesday and sold 890,000 copies in its first 24 hours of availability. Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitello said at the time that 40 percent of the people who bought ME3 at GameStop also purchased a download code for additional content.
For more, see PCMag's first look at Mass Effect 3 and the slideshow below.