Only a “handful” of people requested refunds of their Retake Mass Effect 3 Child’s Play donations.
The wildly successful Retake Mass Effect 3 Child’s Play donation drive took on a tinge of ugliness when Jerry Hokins, better known as Tycho of Penny Arcade, announced that Child’s Play had asked the Retake people to pull the plug. The drive raised a ridiculous $80,000 in donations – ridiculous in a good way, to be clear – but according to Holkins, some contributors thought they were paying to finance a new ending for Mass Effect 3, which led to a “high number of people asking for their donations back.”
The thought of hordes of angry gamers willing to fork over a few bucks for a “better” ending to a videogame but not to help out seriously sick kids doesn’t make the best impression ever, but as it turns out, things weren’t actually as bad as all that and the demand for refunds stayed pretty much flat even in the wake of the Retake drive.
“PayPal disputes are not uncommon – people have stolen cards, donate in error or a host of other things, and we are always happy to refund money,” Child’s Play Project Manager Jamie Dillion told Joystiq. “It does make it impossible, though, to pinpoint which refunds may have been from Retake Mass Effect and which are related to regular disputes.”
“Essentially, there were a handful of people who requested their donation returned, which we did,” she said. “The large majority of the funds were not returned and will be distributed to the hospitals as normal.”
That’s good news. No matter what you may think about the Retake campaign, coming up with 80 grand to support such a worthwhile charity is an amazing show of kindness and generosity, and it’s heartening to hear that the stories of aggrieved Mass Effect fans demanding their money back because it wasn’t going to buy them a new ending were overblown.
