Remember that controversial – and quite frankly, bizarre – pre-order program that Square Enix announced shortly after Deus Ex: Mankind Divided‘s worldwide reveal? Well, it turns out that more than just a few people kicked up a fuss about the whole thing, and Square have now decided to scrap the incentive system entirely, citing poor fan reception as the reason.
A statement on the game’s official website reads:
At both Square Enix and Eidos-Montréal, we’ve been listening to everything you’ve had to say about the Augment Your Pre-Order program. 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 has caused frustration. We quickly noticed that this approach created even more frustration than before, resulting in a resounding amount of negative feedback.
We’ve spent a lot of time reading through all of your comments, working to understand how we can try to make things right for you. After much thought and reflection, we decided to close down the program and make all of the incentive content available to anyone who pre-orders Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or purchases a Day 1 edition of the game. Additionally, the release date will no longer be changed in accordance with pre-order numbers, and everyone will gain access to the game on February 23rd, 2016.
In turn, Square were keen to emphasize that they only had the fans in mind when conceiving the oddball bonus system – thanking them for staying patient and being passionate about the game.
To our faithful fans who’ve already pre-ordered: we will be taking care of everything necessary to ensure that all of the changes to the program will be automatically applied to your purchase. Meanwhile, we’d like to thank everybody for their feedback – we know this wouldn’t have happened with a game that nobody cared about, and we’re just focusing now on delivering a game that lives up to your hopes and expectations.
With the four day early release date now scrapped from the incentive rewards entirely, we can all now look forward to playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on February 23, 2016. Hooray!
