BioWare declared Nov. 7 a holiday in 2012 after the release of Mass Effect 3. Boot up the original Mass Effect and you’ll see why: Commander Shepard’s chest armor carries the N7 emblem, the top rung of the Systems Alliance’s special-forces designation. The calendar supplied the rest: N(ovember)7.
For fourteen years now, N7 Day has been BioWare’s annual celebration of Mass Effect. This year, following news about the studio’s closure, fans are taking it over — and inviting us all to participate in a critical assignment, should we choose to accept it. The fan group We Are Mass Effect is asking players on any platform to boot up a Mass Effect game at the same time on Saturday, Nov. 7, from 2 to 5 p.m.
The idea is to see as many people as possible playing at once to truly demonstrate (with data!) how many of us love and are still actively enjoying Mass Effect. Let’s put this challenge in perspective: How many people have played this game at once on Steam? Legendary Edition’s all-time peak is 59,817 concurrent players, set May 2021, two days after the remaster’s launch.
Since fall 2021, the highest monthly peak has been about 9,300 players, and over the past year, monthly peaks have run between 4,200 and 6,500 people playing simultaneously. But that’s just one platform: Steam’s chart don’t factor anyone on consoles or on Windows PC via the EA app, so the organizers invite those players to share screenshots and clips with #SaveMassEffect during that three-hour window instead. Saving Mass Effect may be one of the community’s goals this Saturday.
It’s certainly been a popular initiative over the past two weeks. A Change.org petition asking EA to keep the series going has gathered almost 300,000 verified signatures. A fan-organized Times Square billboard flashed “Keelah Si’yah #SaveMassEffect” (the first, a quarian phrase about the hope of finding home) ran for 15 seconds every hour on Oct. 26.
Those signatures and that billboard are a measure of how much this series means to people. Fans are hoping this year’s N7 Day sends a similarly unmissable message. BioWare’s own lore describes the climb to N7 as a ladder of invitation-only courses.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
