Following fierce consumer criticism, Square Enix has today cancelled Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’s divisive ‘Augment Your Pre-order’ scheme, effective immediately.
In a join update with developer Eidos Montreal, the publisher 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 has caused frustration. We quickly noticed that this approach created even more frustration than before, resulting in a resounding amount of negative feedback.”
After “much thought and reflection”, it said, it was shutting down the scheme as of today and making all of the incentive content available to anyone who pre-orders the upcoming cyberpunk action game or buys the day one edition of the title. Furthermore, the idea of staggering the release date to give preference to those who pre-order the game has also been canned, with everyone now set to receive access from February 23, 2016.
In conclusion, Square Enix added: “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.”
