Mass Effect 3 in space update: "we have visual contact with one balloon but it's 150ft up a tree"

We recently mentioned Bioware's plan to send Mass Effect 3 to space and back by attaching copies to weather balloons and sending them into the stratosphere. According to the Mass Effect 3 in space page the first couple of balloons have been launched, but they've hit a bit of a snag, and by snag I mean tree.

A tweet from the Mass Effect twitter feed mentioned the problem, adding that this team of onlookers are "...currently trying to knock it loose with a baseball attached to string. Some just went to Santa Cruz for gear." Since then they appear to have gotten into some sort of fight with the tree in question. "It's foliage is foiling our plans!" they say.

An auspicious start for an ambitious campaign, It's going even worse than our initial predictions for the fate of those copies of Mass Effect 3. You can track the progress of each balloon using GPS on the Mass Effect 3 site .

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.