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Mass Effect 3 on PC doesn’t support gamepads; Bioware explains

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In addition to consoles, I play games on PC – but wherever possible (genre dependant, of course!) I like to plug in a gamepad and play it that – something that confuses and angers ardent adherents of the glorious PC master-race. Generally, PC gamers prefer to stick to their tried and trusted, carpal tunnel syndrome-producing mouse and keyboard combination. But, and this is a big thing, PC gamers also like to have choice – and the recent news that Mass Effect 3 for the PC wouldn’t support gamepads has raised ire, and a few eyebrows.

Bioware took to Twitter to try and explain the decision to nix pad support.

“There is a development cost in terms of time/effort to get all the graphical user interfaces so 360 buttons show up on PC,” senior designer Manveer Heir explained to Tweeter j0hn385, says a report by Eurogamer. “It may seem minor, but our GUI team was already stretched thin, and things were coming in at the last minute, so we couldn’t add more work.”

That explanation didn’t fly with j0hn385, who decried it as a “don’t give a damn” attitude.

“Definitely not ‘we don’t give a damn’,” Heir replied. “It’s unfortunate and I understand why people are upset, but there are dev realities, sadly.”

I have to side with j0hn385 on this, personally. So many other PC games support control pads – especially the Xbox 360’s – incredibly well, even switching out HUD’s and interfaces to match the controllers inputs. Seeing as Mass Effect 3 is on consoles as well, it really shouldn’t have been too much trouble to port the interface over, and it’s not like they have to specifically code in support for pads; it’s built right in to DirectX. Of course, as somebody who’s never made a game, I could just be talking out of my arse – but a developer the size of Bioware, with EA’s financial backing really should have had this planned and implemented right from the start.

Oh, as a bonus, the game’s files are encrypted, so clever people can’t mod in gamepad support – but there are a few 3rd party apps that might work.

Last Updated: February 17, 2012

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