After the majority of the gaming community issued a collective “WTF?!?!” yesterday over Deep Silver’s decision to include a statue of a mutilated female torso clothed in a bikini in the Europe/Australia exclusive Dead Island Riptide Zombie Bait Edition, the publisher backtracked a bit and has issued an apology via their Twitter account.
The statement (which can be read in full at the bottom of this post) first apologizes for “any offense caused by the… Zombie Bait Edition”, and then quickly shifts the blame for the decision to produce and sell a bloody female torso statue on Deep Silver’s overseas offices.
The publisher then went on to say that they “regret” including the “gruesome statue of a zombie torso” in the limited edition of Dead Island Riptide, and promised that they are “collecting feedback” from the fan community and plan to use it for “ongoing internal meetings with Deep Silver’s entire international team”.
Interestingly, Deep Silver also seemed to shift part of the blame for the inspiration behind the distributing statue to fans of the first Dead Island game, stating that the torso “was cut up like many of our fans had done to the undead enemies in the original Dead Island“.
So, if you played Dead Island and in the process killed a zombie in the game (which was the point of playing the game), you are to blame for giving Deep Silver’s overseas marketing team the idea to make a mutilated female torso statue in the first place.
Hopefully, you are feeling some sense of shame right now for your role in all of this…
It should also be noted that Deep Silver also failed to say whether or not they will be going through with plans to include the statue in the Zombie Bait Edition, and as of the time of publication they have not clarified the statement.
Read the full apology for Dead Island Riptide‘s Zombie Bait Edition below.
“We deeply apologize for any offense caused by the Dead Island Riptide “Zombie Bait Edition”, the collector’s edition announced for Europe and Australia. Like many gaming companies, Deep Silver has many offices in different countries, which is why sometimes different versions of Collector’s Editions come into being for North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.”
“For the limited run of the Zombie Bait Edition for Europe and Australia, a decision was made to include a gruesome statue of a zombie torso, which was cut up like many of our fans had done to the undead enemies in the original Dead Island.”
“We sincerely regret this choice. We are collecting feedback continuously from the Dead Island community, as well as the international gaming community at large, for ongoing internal meetings with Deep Silver’s entire international team today. For now, we want to reiterate to the community, fans and industry how deeply sorry we are, and that we are committed to making sure this will never happen again.”
