Say what you will about BioWare, they support their games darn well, if we dare state it. Some further proof comes now with the release of a brand spankin' new patch for the PC version of Mass Effect, released well over a year ago. A bit late, perhaps, but we're not really going to complain, though you can feel free (really). This succeeds the company's previously announced second set of (paid) DLC for the game.

The new patch brings us up to version 1.02, and contains relatively minor fixes for the most part, excepting a couple of hardware-specific major ones. Update: the patch also brings improvements to the game's activation system, implementing automatic revokation upon uninstalling the game, as seems to be the standard with EA's latest PC titles. In short, you can install the game on up to five computers at one time, and now never have to worry about reaching the activation limit, provided you uninstall as appropriate.

The release notes are below; grab the new patch at the source or on FileFront.

• The player will no longer become stuck in the Feros elevator
• Quickslot abilities are now disabled in elevators
• The pixilated bloom and DoF on Radeon x1650 and x1950 cards has been addressed
• GPF crashes when playing Quasar have been addressed
• The player's weapon will not auto fire if the fire button is released as an active loading screen appears
• Low LOD on Garrus' face has been addressed
• Reconfiguring the PRIMARY INTERACT key (Default set to E) to any other key will no longer make the ENTER key interact TWICE when used.
• Player will not become stuck in his action station in elevators (primarily occurred in the Peak 15 elevators)
• Occasional crash when encountering Rachni on UNC_73 has been addressed
• Using the enter key to add and remove talent points will function properly
• GUI: Pressing U when first getting control of Shepard and then pressing ESC to close it will not cause the player to lose all input functionality
• Romance confrontation conversation will fire after 3rd planet complete
• The player will no longer become stuck when using the Enter key rather than the primary interact key to initiate conversation with certain followers on the Normandy
• Audio skipping during conversations has been addressed
• Addressed cases where Realtec HD audio users were experiencing issues with cut off / crackling audio after patching the game to version 1.01
• The issue regarding dynamic character shadows appearing grainy has been resolved.
• Nihilus and all Turians are no longer missing their face markings
• The issue of Garrus having no lighting on his face until a save is loaded has been addressed
• The game will now create save files when "My Documents" is set to the root of a drive
  

• The issue where PCs with NVIDIA GeForce 8xxx and above video cards were experiencing random General Protection Fault crashes appears to have been fixed with the GeForce 182.06+ drivers. Please ensure when playing Mass Effect that all PC drivers are up to date.