Vicious internet bullies harass EA employee after Mass Effect: Andromeda backlash

Edit: Allie Rose-Marie Leost did label herself as the lead facial animator on Mass Effect: Andromeda in her Twitter bio. Of course, this doesn't change the fact that what happened to her was wrong but now we know why the blame was directed at her. We apologize for not mentioning this, we got our information from her updated Twitter bio where she removed the portion that said she worked on Andromeda, the Bioware quote below, and the credits in the main menu of Mass Effect: Andromeda which didn't appear to mention her name under any of the animation credits.

The original story remains unaltered below.

The internet is a pretty vile place. It allows users to hide behind anonymous usernames and bully other people for absurd reasons and that is certainly the case with Allie Rose-Marie Leost. Leost was an EA employee who worked at the EA motion capture labs in Vancouver and was misidentified as a lead animator on Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Mass Effect: Andromeda has been the subject of controversy for the last week due to it having some incredibly awkward animations. Some of these animations are just glitches, but most of them are just part of the game and stem from the way character's faces look and move during conversations. It has caused lots of annoyance from fans and some very upset people have attempted to track down the animators responsible. In their anger, they misidentified Leost as a lead animator and have sent her horrible tweets and messages.

Various users told her she should be ashamed of her work, sexually harassed her, and even told her the only reason she got her job was because she performed sexual acts on her employers. Of course, there's no validity to any of these accusations and she has nothing to be ashamed of because she wasn't even the lead animator.

Bioware saw all of this and made a public statement condemning the actions of some of their fans. Obviously, these select people don't represent the entire Mass Effect fanbase and there are some true fans who are disgusted by these comments.

Mass Effect: Andromeda was announced in 2015 and has been in development for many years. Even though it might not live up to some people's expectations, real people spent years of their lives and hundreds of hours working on a game meant to be played for your enjoyment. Of course, there's room for criticism but sexually harassing someone because you think the game wasn't good enough or shaming them for their work is straight up wrong. We wish Allie Rose-Marie Leost the best of luck and hope she recovers from this dark period in her life.

Mass Effect: Andromeda releases on March 21st, 2017 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Xbox One and PC players can get a head start via EA Access which will allow them to play the first 5 or so hours of the game's campaign and 5 hours of the game's multiplayer.

[Kotaku]