The Retake Mass Effect movement was based on the dissatisfaction of fans with the ending of the third blockbuster game release and wanted it to be changed/modified so they would have more options about how the story ends.

More about the game: Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect games are based on player choice, such that how your ME3 story goes depends on how you played the previous games. While ME3 provided different ending options for players, each option resulted in a similar story space, making the choices irrelevant.

How to address the problem 1: Retake ME3 Cupcake Campaign

The Cupcake campaign was a drive setup to send BioWare 402 cupcakes divided into three equal parts of green, blue, and red frost for the cupcakes. Despite the varieties, all the cupcakes tasted the same – Vanilla. This was a way for the gamers to express their dissatisfaction with the deceptive ending of the ME3 game, but in a sweet way to show that they still loved the games and were true fans and supporters.

The idea was proposed by a girl to make different types of donuts that taste the same, but to have greater visual variety, they proposed cupcakes that would have different frost colors with the letters A, B, and C on them. Sam, the organizer of the ME3 campaign, paid for the cupcakes out-of-pocket and then set up a crowdfunding drive on Chip In to recover the money.

In 30 minutes, the drive had raised over $1,100 for an expenditure of just over $1,000. So the crowdfunding campaign was stopped and the extra amount donated to a children’s charity.

How to address the problem 2: Retake Mass Effect Child’s Play

To begin with, Retake Mass Effect Child’s Play was a campaign set up on Chip In to raise $80,000 for a charity called Penny Arcade Child’s Play.

After a very helpful comment, we have updated this page:

Got some facts wrong man, first off it’s wasn’t set to raise $80,000 dollars, people hoped it was was a few hundred at best. People went nuts when they broke $100 $500…and it just didn’t stop. Eventually it reached $10,000 and shortly after it reached that mark someone donated $10,000 anonymously though many suspect Bioware or one of the voice actors involved in the project. I know Raphael Sbarge (Kaidan Alenko) and Kimberly Brooks (Ashley Williams) both retweeted their support of the donations (twas my tweets they retweeted), also Jessica Merizan one of Bioware Community Managers at the time retweeted the link and praised the results.

An insignificant number of people were confused, even if one tenth of the donations were refunded it would still have been an amount of money raised that was more than 1% of Child’s Play total fundraising for the previous year from all sources (I researched their financial reports to provide such encouraging statistics during the fundraiser)

However, a good number of the people who contributed to the cause thought that the funds would be used to change the ending of the ME3 game – and not support the charity – which raised quite a bit of confusion. Since the supporters were not sure what they were contributing to (a charity or game), they decided to get their money back.