As most all of us know by now, yesterday, EA announced its acquisition of Bioware and Pandemic for a ridiculously large sum of money. Although I'm not one to support panicky, idiot-spawning fear-mongering, this is a situation that has a lot of gamers concerned, and rightfully so. In the past, EA similarly purchased Origin and Westwood Studios, two PC game developers with high-quality titles and myriad achievements under their belts. Origin and Westwood were then subsequently dismantled and absorbed into the EA studio collective. While Westwood's Command & Conquer has done well for itself under EA's wing, particularly with Command & Conquer 3, it hasn't been entirely smooth sailing. Even worse, of Origin's popular series, only Ultima really remains, and only in the form of Ultima Online, which still receives the occasional content update.

This isn't to suggest that Bioware is officially doomed, and that some smackwit development team at a completely different EA studio is going to piss on everything that they created with Jade Empire 08, 09, and 10. However, history can be a strong indicator, and so Bioware could be headed down a similar path as Origin.

So if you don't like what's happened, what is there that you can do? Well, there is one thing, though many of you won't necessarily agree with it. The simplest way to protest against EA's purchase of Bioware is to not buy Mass Effect. If you preordered it, cancel it and move that money to another game you have your eyes on. When it's released, don't buy it. Don't even buy it when the game hits the eventual bargain bin. Though it may seem like a childish way to go about this, if enough people elect to give EA the finger instead of giving Bioware their money, then maybe it will send a message. It might not save Bioware from the corporate guillotine, but it might at least send the message to not jerk us around.

Would it work? Only if enough people did it. Besides, it's not like Bioware needs your money to stay afloat with all the green EA just fed them.