Two gamers, Michael Davis and Miguel Droz, happened to come across one of the Mass Effect 3 weather balloons in the Arizona desert. Instead of fighting to the death a la The Hunger Games, as I would have done, they decided to raffle off the title.
Their plan was to sell raffle tickets for $5 each and then donate 30% of the proceeds to Child's Play, Penny Arcade's incredibly worthy charity for children's hospitals. As for the rest, they hoped to fund a future video games company of their own.
However, Nevada—where they reside—state law prohibits all lotteries that do not donate all funds to charity. So it was either donate all the funds to Child's Play or scrap the raffle. They chose to scrap the raffle, and then they refunded all buyers.
Hey guys, if you really don't want to play the game, I'll gladly take it off your hands.
[Source]
