Deus Ex Pre-Order Causes Controversy

On the 31st of August, the Official Deus Ex Youtube channel released a video entitled ‘Augment your Pre-order‘.  If you glance quickly to the like/dislike bar, you’ll see an enormous disparity between likes and dislikes currently listed at sub 130 likes, and over 8000 dislikes as of the time of writing of this article. With such a one sided response, you’d think that Square Enix had hired Donald Trump to try to sell the souls of your firstborn children to ISIS. But no, the content of the video is oh so more awful than that.

Here’s the video if you want to see for yourself.

 
‘Augment your Pre-Order’  boasts that people will be able to customise their pre-orders, falling in tandem with the themes of choice present in the iconic game series. As pre-order numbers rise, the customer receives more choices for items to add as a pre-order bonus, thus more content for day one. A good idea to executives on a marketing board, but if you take a step back and think about it, there’s absolutely no way that someone CANNOT be short changed by this system. No matter what it is the customer, picks there’s always going to be something missing. You want the comic book or the soundtrack? Would you like this DLC or this DLC? You’re not getting all of it, that costs extra.

I’ll tell you what we really want, Square. We’d like the lot. We’re buying a luxury product, we don’t want to buy this game which many of the fans have been waiting years for, just so you can sell the rest of it to us piece by piece. Whilst the idea of getting more pre-order bonuses as the number of pre-orders rise is a neat idea, the way this has been done is so flawed, it really doesn’t need a statement from me saying how frankly, crap it is.

Though one cannot fault the last tier, which isn’t a choice, but simply allows people to get the game 4 days earlier than the release date of the 23^rd of February.  As far as pre-order bonuses go, this is likely one of the better ones. Though without question, actual content of the game shouldn’t be locked behind a sales expectation. It feels a little like holding the game hostage, which adds to the list of things wrong with this pre-order initiative.

The themes of the latest Deus Ex reach an incredible level of irony when confronted by this latest issue in the long line of pre-order hate coming from the gaming world. In a game series where humanity fights with itself over lies, internal politics and corporate interests, it’s somewhat boggling that the game studio/publisher responsible would be so out of touch with their fans to the point of managing to alienate practically everyone all at once. But maybe that’s just part of the master plan? Perhaps Square Enix don’t want anyone to buy it. Clever plan Square, but I see through your ruse.

The amount of hate pouring onto this video is surely causing a massive stir for Square Enix and Eidos Montreal; so we’ll expect a comment from them in the near future. When they release something, we’ll let you know about it.

DEUS EX MANKIND DIVIDED RELEASES FEBRUARY 23rd 2016

OR FEBRUARY 19^th IF PRE-ORDER TARGETS ARE REACHED