All kinds of “stupid” PR tricks that developers do to entice gamers

Cause gamer Paying attention to your game is a challenge. For a successful game, in addition to quality, marketing communication plays an extremely important role. In a world where advertising seems to be something of a nuisance, how to capture the attention of gamers is always a difficult question. From there, all kinds of PR trick has been created by the developers, in which there is no shortage of ridiculous jokes and in the end it is just a shake of the gamer’s head.

Fallout 76 by Bethesda
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“Never assume customers are fools” is the lesson Bethesda needs to understand after this incident. As part of the Fallout 76 campaign, Bethesda released a Collector’s Edition, which includes 24 figurines, a Power Armor hat, a map of the Appalachian region, a tin box, and a Canvas bag.

To own, players have to pay 200 dollars (4.6 million) but what they receive is completely opposite to expectations. Canvas bags are made from crumpled nylon, a waste product no more, no less. Although the company later had a plan to compensate, Bethesda’s one-sided advertising and deliberately ignoring everything left a bad impression in the hearts of gamers. Not to mention the game had dozens of bugs at launch, in the end what the company received was just the disgust of the players.

Homefront of THQ
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To boost Homefront consumption, someone came up with a crazy idea: release 10,000 red balloons in San Francisco. Ideally, this bunch of balloons would fly over the game developer conference area and create a stunning sight. But life is unpredictable, these balloons quickly landed in the San Francisco Bay area. GameStop and THQ were quickly criticized for causing environmental pollution. THQ later explained that these balloons were made of soybean residue and were biodegradable, however, the city of San Francisco did not accept that and imposed a $7,000 fine.

Dante’s Inferno’s EA
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Thinking this would be a great communication idea, EA hired a bunch of people posing as Christians to stand outside the E3 2009 event to protest Dante’s Inferno. The plan is fake like a protest condemning the game with slogans like EA is digging its own grave, will “die in fire” for releasing the game too violently. Many people were deceived, but soon after, they discovered that it was all just a PR trick to catch the view. After that, a lot of “mainstream” Christians did not hesitate to criticize EA for daring to smear their image, turning them into fanatics to promote the game.

Splinter Cell by Ubisoft
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Back in 2010, the New Zealand police were embroiled in a Ubisoft “dumb” commercial. A man broke into the Viaduct Basin port area in Auckland and pointed a gun at people there. Immediately, the police were summoned because they thought it was a terrorist incident, it turned out that he was just advertising for Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell Conviction game. Well, Ubisoft (or Ubisoft’s New Zealand media partner to be exact) thought it would be a great idea for a man to walk into a bar on a Friday night posing as a gunner. The gun was fake and of course no one was hurt but obviously, this is not a good media idea for cam.

Watch Dogs by Ubisoft
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Yes, it’s Ubisoft again. Four years after the Splinter Cell incident, the police were summoned again. Ninemsn store in Australia suddenly appeared a suspicious package in front of the store. Once opened, inside there was a small safe and a note saying to check voicemail. This person didn’t check voicemail but just opened the safe, and then the beeps started to appear.

Police were called in and everyone in the area was evacuated on suspicion of a terrorist bombing. Finally, after opening the safe, the police found … a disc of the game Watch Dogs. Ubisoft then explained that this was a promotion, the voicemail was sent with the content to remind the stores to prepare to sell the game, but because the employee did not check the email, it caused an unnecessary misunderstanding. .

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