The #SaveMassEffect campaign sent a mobile billboard truck to Redwood City on November 6th, scheduled to circle EA's headquarters for four hours! N7 Day, November 7th, is the annual Mass Effect celebration BioWare used to run, and this is the first one since EA announced it was shutting BioWare down on October 21st. This week, a House of Commons petition asked the Canadian government to fund BioWare's independence, and that one can draw a formal government answer.
The organizers behind the @WeAreMassEffect account posted about the truck themselves, along with a request for photos and a warning to stay off EA's property:
According to Kotaku, organizers Ariel Aguilar and Mer ordered the truck with content creator Kala Elizabeth. It was set to run until 1 p.m. Pacific. It's the same campaign that put up the Times Square billboard last month.
There are now two big petitions!
The one you've probably seen is on Change.org, past 300,000 signatures as of November 6th, and it's aimed at EA. The new one is e-7898, an official House of Commons e-petition from Brendan Routh of Burnaby, B.C., sponsored by NDP MP Don Davies. It opened November 4th and had cleared 3,900 validated signatures as of November 6th. Only Canadian citizens and residents can sign.
First, it asks the government to "Provide BioWare with the capital necessary to secure independence of themselves and their intellectual property from Electronic Arts and resume business as an independent, Canadian company."
So does the Canadian government have to answer? If it's presented, yes, but not yet!
The petition is open until March 4th, 2027. The House's e-petition guide says the Clerk does a final validation of signatures after it closes, and with at least 500 valid names (the current count is already well past that bar, pending the final check) it gets certified and can be presented to the House. The government then has 45 calendar days to respond.
That means no response is due until spring 2027 at the earliest, and nothing in the rules says the answer has to be yes.
If Parliament is dissolved first, a petition not yet presented closes, and the government no longer has to respond to any petition, presented or not.
Davies says federal funding can happen. "The petition primarily asks the federal government to provide the required capital. This is absolutely possible. Our goal with the petition is to demonstrate just how many Canadians believe this is a worthwhile investment in our entertainment industry," he told PC Gamer. He also made his case on X on November 6th, including a call to sign:
Neither petition can force a sale!
EA still owns BioWare and its IP, so as Kotaku points out, EA would have to agree to any deal.
The NDP also isn't the party in power, and I couldn't find an EA response to the truck or to e-7898.
BioWare veteran Mark Darrah said in October that the closure might make EA more likely to sell those IPs, or to "bury them in the vault."
What do you think? Should federal money go toward buying BioWare back from EA? Would EA ever sell?
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