After receiving an overwhelming response with a marketing promotion that seen free digital copies of Battlefield 3 keys being passed out with pre-orders of Mass Effect 3, EA has decided to shutdown the promotion.

The deal officially ended yesterday, February 16th, and according to the Examiner the promotion ended specifically because of the "overwhelming response." Ah, you have got to love EA.

We reported on the free Battlefield 3 keys just a few days ago. Only a day after the news of the promotion surfaced, Electronic Arts has ended the promotion.

To be specific, if you pre-ordered Mass Effect 3 for home consoles or PC you automatically received a free access key for Battlefield 3, enabling you to download the full game via Origin, for free. It goes without saying that gamers jumped on the opportunity like Republicans catching Obama in a lie.

Given that the promotion is now over with, some gamers are wondering if they will still receive their access keys to Battlefield 3. Well, EA has assured the community via Twitter that anyone who placed a pre-order for Mass Effect 3 during the time in which the promotion was active will have access to their Battlefield 3 key come March 8th. So your pre-orders were not in vain...for those of you fast enough to get them in.

It seems a little odd that EA would end the promo so soon given that digital access keys for the full version of Battlefield 3 didn't really cost the company anything but, oh well.

You can try out Mass Effect 3 right now with a playable demo, which went live just a few days ago.