The people have spoken and apparently Square Enix and Eidos were listening, recently announcing the cancellation of the “augment your pre-order” campaign.
In a recent statement on the Deus Ex website, Square Enix and Eidos have said “When it was first conceived, we wanted the program to give you more choice about what you received in terms of pre-order incentives – because we’ve seen in the past that when we choose those packages ourselves, and split them across regions, it causes frustration. We quickly noted that this approach created even more frustration than before, resulting in a resounding amount of negative feedback.”
They go on to say that all pre-order DLC will still be made available to anyone who pre-orders the game, or purchases a day-one copy of the game. Furthermore, since they can no longer quantify their pre-order numbers, they will no longer be offering the release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided four-day early and everyone will gain access to it on February 23, 2016.
While it fills me with confidence that the gaming community was able to speak out against this shady program, effectively stopping it, it still outrages me that Square Enix and Eidos are still perpetuating pre-order and day-one DLC culture. As I mentioned in a previous article, while I don’t think pre-orders are inherently bad, it baffles me that after the “resounding amount of negative feedback” Square Enix and Eidos are still opting to section off content and hold it for ransom, just so people will commit to buy the game before they hear anything about it.
What astounds me even more is how they opted to axe the “four days early” bonus, essentially scolding the audience for not playing along with their scheme while having the gull to include a quote like “Your feedback and input is of the utmost importance to us, as it’s your loyalty and passion for our franchises that gives us the opportunity to continue providing you with great gaming experiences” in their statement.
With such negative feedback, you’d think Square Enix and Eidos would want to garner some goodwill on behalf of their audience but instead, Square Enix and Eidos have chosen to perpetuate insidious pre-order culture in a desperate attempt to fleece players for a few extra dollars.
