The Mass Effect modding scene did what BioWare couldn’t

polygon.com:

Mass Effect Legendary Edition,the remaster nearly a decade in the making, struck a nerve when it was finally released. Fans were thrilled to return to spacefaring as Commander Shepard, but a minor DLC from the first game, Pinnacle Station,was missing. BioWare later revealed that the code for that section of the game had been corrupted, meaning the developer no longer had access to it.

Fortunately, a crack team of volunteer developers had already dedicated years of their lives to finding ways around the more finicky parts of Mass Effect’smakeup. Their expertise allowed them to figure out a way to restore Pinnacle Station when BioWare couldn’t by modding it into the game post-launch. Technically speaking, this shouldn’t have even been possible, but the game’s community of modders have made this — and so much more — a reality.

This is the story of the Mass Effectmodding community, and how it went from a ragtag group of fervent forum-dwellers to a thousands-strong social hub that attracted the attention and admiration of BioWare itself.

The buildup to Mass Effect 3was like little else in modern video game history. After Mass Effect 2 culminated in the now-illustrious suicide mission, fans waited two years to witness the end of Shepard’s galaxy-spanning journey. When the game finally launched in March 2012, it sold almost a million copies within 24 hours.

But that’s not what Mass Effect 3 is famous for. When people talk about Mass Effect 3 today, it’s impossible to avoid discussing its own notoriously divisive ending — which, incidentally, is what drove many of the people in the community toward modding in the first place.

WarrantyVoider is often credited as the father of the Mass Effectmodding scene. Although he didn’t