Ubisoft Apologizes for The Division 2 Email Promising a 'Real Government Shutdown' (pcgamer.com) 150
Ubisoft, the game studio behind upcoming title "Tom Clancy's The Division 2", has apologized for an email that made light of the U.S. government shutdown that ended a week ago. From a report: Ubisoft sent out a marketing email for The Division 2 earlier Thursday which prompted a quick retraction. The email was an invitation to the game's private beta, with the subject line: "Come see what a real government shutdown looks like in the Private Beta".
Not long after the email was issued, the publisher sent a retraction. "A marketing email promoting Tom Clancy's The Division 2 was sent in error today. This was a grave breakdown in process and we apologize for this error and the offensive subject line of the email. We recognize the very real impact of the United States government shut down on thousands of people and did not intend to make light of the situation."
Not long after the email was issued, the publisher sent a retraction. "A marketing email promoting Tom Clancy's The Division 2 was sent in error today. This was a grave breakdown in process and we apologize for this error and the offensive subject line of the email. We recognize the very real impact of the United States government shut down on thousands of people and did not intend to make light of the situation."
OUTRAGE (Score:5, Funny)
Too late... OUTRAGE
Re:OUTRAGE (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know what is going on. But I can assure you that whatever it is I AM OUTRAGED!!!
Let me inform my Twitter followers about how outraged I am. Surely we can get someone fired if we try!
Re: OUTRAGE (Score:1)
I am outraged that the government shutdown ended before I could launch a food drive for the poor deprived government workers. I have three jars of peanut butter of a brand it turns out I don't like that I planned to donate to the hungry out of work government workers [bureaucrats.gov].
Re: OUTRAGE (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF is everyone so damned wimpy and scared of offending anyone?
I mean, wow...so much for jokes, or even free speech if taken to the far extreme (and people do seem to be trying for this).
I mean, get a sense of humor.
Quit looking to be offended. If you don't like something that was said...just fscking ignore it.
Surly you have something better to be doing?
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Thats the premise of the internet. Everyone with a Twitter account can send other people to hell and make them feel guitly for it.
Re: OUTRAGE (Score:5, Informative)
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Anyone that can't afford the video games, has more important things they should be doing rather than bitching. An
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I suspect Ubisoft doesn't care much about people who "literally can't afford food."
They are concerned that they can't quite pull off Rockstar-esque fuck the twitter outrage.
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Re:OUTRAGE (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know what is going on. But I can assure you that whatever it is I AM OUTRAGED!!!
Let me inform my Twitter followers about how outraged I am. Surely we can get someone fired if we try!
Damn. This sounds like a Trump rant but, with the username "penandpaper", you're obviously not him. :-)
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Haha! Charade you are! I am Trump.
I use /. for more intellectual conversations particularly about unicode and emacs. I would dabble in systemd but I refrain from such childish discussions because my genius is better suited for character dissuasions.
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I'm outraged because some other people are outraged and I'm afraid that if I'm not outraged too then they'll get outraged at me! ANGER!
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I came here to post that I was outraged at the outrage but find you have beat me to it!!! EXTREME FROWN at your STEALING MY IDEA even though you would have no way to know I WOULD THINK OF IT LATER!
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Being that I think they said about 1/3 of the Federal Govt. was shut down for that long and the majority US citizens didn't even notice, and didn't have it really come close to having an effect on their daily, normal lives....says something.
I think it says, we could do just fine with a WHOLE lot LESS Federal govt., and less govt. workers.
I think that's something we should look at as we look back up
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Being ignorant of the wide-ranging and long-lasting effects of the shutdown is not proof that small government works. They turned half a million people into indentured servants just so you wouldn't be severely impacted in the short-term by a true government shutdown.
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The promise of back pay is what they were indentured under. It's not even technically wrong.
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Yup, there's a huge gap between where we are no an anarchy. We could do with 1/3rd fewer government employees. Woudn't have much effect on taxes, as most of the budget is checks mailed to the old and the poor, not the salaries of current government workers, but hey every little bit helps.
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Well I think it is a lot like 9/11 jokes made in the early 2000's. Not necessarily extremely offensive, but poorly timed, as a lot of federal employees, are still feeling the pain from the current shutdown. If this was released in a few months (assuming no more shutdowns) I would guess the humor in the statement would be better received. We make jokes about death and dying all the time, but we don't do it in front of someone who just lost a loved one.
But I expect the retraction was less to prevent outrage
Re:OUTRAGE (Score:5, Funny)
What does NASA stand for??
Need Another Seven Astronauts....
It was the same in the 80s (Score:2)
I remember this joke on the playground the very next day.
Were Christa McAuliffe's eyes blue? Yes, one blew this way, and the other blew that way.
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Hundreds of them.
Why did Christa McAuliffe win teacher of the year?
She only exploded in front of her class once.
What's the last thing she said to her husband?
You feed the kids, I'll feed the fish.
How do we know what brand of shampoo she used?
Her head and shoulders washed upon the beach.
I've always felt that jokes are how we immortalize something and yet take the sting out of it at the same time. Were there any good Columbine jokes?
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Yeah, it didn't take long at all for those jokes to start flying around back in the day.
Why do NASA engineers drink Coke?
Because they couldn't get 7-Up.
Stalin on dark humor. [starecat.com]
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Well I think it is a lot like 9/11 jokes made in the early 2000's.
Nope. People died in 9/11, no laughing matter. A shutdown is no worse than other massive layoffs. At worst, you get some powerty. But people survive.
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But people survive.
I died a little on the inside which is just like 100 911's.
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More like the marketing team realized that they would get even more publicity for the game by issuing an apology and getting the mainstream tech press interested in the product.
Re:OUTRAGE (Score:5, Interesting)
The cynic in me thinks that Ubisoft's "outraged retraction" was just part of the marketing plan.
Hey... it worked, right? You now have Slashdot and other media outlets talking about The Division 2, a game I've never heard of until now.
Re:OUTRAGE (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there actually was any outrage... It seems that they sent the retraction email a few hours later, and when you look on Twitter and Facebook there is basically nothing.
Seems like they manufactured a fake outrage for marketing purposes. Should provide fodder for meta-outrage industry I guess.
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Here I thought the standard operating procedure for modern journalism is to find 1 tweet that proves the point being made. If you find one tweet that's all you need. "Basically nothing" means it isn't nothing which means "Outrage across social media".
Same thing happened with the whole "Republicans hate dancing AOC video!!!" because of one tweet.
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Well, I mean, I was mocking the whole OUTRAGE thing.
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You spelled it wrong. It's OUTRAGED.
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Not soon enough.
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It worked. I wouldn't have heard of it otherwise.
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Ended? (Score:2, Informative)
> that made light of the U.S. government shutdown that ended a week ago.
Did someone misread Trump's tweets? The shutdown has not ended, it is only "suspended". His tantrum resumes on February 15 if he "doesn't get his wall".
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, all sorts of barriers work.
Walls work...just ask China.
On a lighter note....if no wall, why not just get our best military snipers and let them practice at the border.
Hey, sounds like a good place for land mines...make them WELL MARKED and mapped out, but put those a
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How dare anyone make fun of that! Grrrrrrr!
I thought it was funny (Score:2)
Both in the context in which it was meant and also the fact that this actually happened, which was obviously going to require an apology.
Re: I thought it was funny (Score:3)
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I'm not a gamer, so I'm not the target demographic - but I thought this was very clever and funny.
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Tom Clancy's The Division 2
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Yep. There's no such thing as bad publicity.
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p.s. the dildo thing was TMI, please seek help.
Brilliant Marketing. (Score:2)
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I also thought of simulating the real thing (Score:1)
Cave in (Score:2)
To correct the situation, tell them you will not be buying their product because they caved on a silly joke.
If it matters.
Considering the source... (Score:2)
PCgamer. No surprise they would put this up.
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Still waiting for them to apologize for Uplay (Score:1)
what a effing trainwreck that thing is.
hmm (Score:2)
I'd probably be more empathetic about this if anybody cared about political jokes that offend in other directions, e.g. "don't like abortion, don't have one, har har."
Ubisoft is full of a bunch of sniveling gutless co (Score:1)
They should have held their ground.
The email marketing strategy was hilariously appropriate for "The Division" franchise and on point.
As Pierre Desprges said (Score:2)
As Pierre Desprges said:
One can laugh about anything, but not with anyone.
sole person? (Score:2)
who decides to send these things out?
i imagine many meeting were held were people brainstormed about what to do, somebody picked one of the proposols, then another group probably got to work on the actual execution, resulting in several drafts, somebody picked one that would be used and it got send out.
none of the people involved thought it was going to an issue?
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Wait until apps that track you and pop up a harassment icon over your head in augmented reality appear, so people with opposing opinions can harass you.
Re: WTH (Score:1)
Wait until people can hack your brain and literally manufacture your perception of reality.....oh wait...We are pretty much there
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1. The "wealthy" already have personal jets and don't need to go through TSA.
2. Hotels still have people traveling by car, and train. So they would stay open.
3. Restaurants still have regulars. Families do like going out to eat once in a while.
4. The wealthy already complain to Trump, he just doesn't care.
Also the TSA really isn't needed, airports ran just fine before them, and would run fine without them. Apparently we just needed to be entertained while we waited so the
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1. goes by by once the Air Traffic shuts down.
Please explain this? How does stopping the screening of passengers shut down all air traffic? You really think the person looking at you, your id, and your ticket for 30 seconds prevents anything? Or that the x-ray machine which shows metal objects as a black mass on a black background catches anything? Its theater, all a show for the amusements of. . . well I'm not sure who this amuses. You want safety, hire people trained to profile crowds and a few armed guards at the doors. It costs less and is w
Re:Oversensitive (Score:5, Informative)
Say that to the people who have for the first time needed to go to food pantries so they can eat for the week.
It is a funny statement, just not timed correctly. In a month or so, it would be much more funny. Right now the joke is under "too soon".
I really don't see angry people rioting in the streets from this, just some nasty emails saying they were insensitive to the pain they just had.
In a few weeks the paid would be gone, as they get there checks.
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Say that to the people who have for the first time needed to go to food pantries so they can eat for the week. It is a funny statement, just not timed correctly. In a month or so, it would be much more funny. Right now the joke is under "too soon".
"Don't like abortion? Don't have one, har har"
Sadly, an abortion won't go away in a month or so.
Some political jokes are more equal than others, I guess.
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That and the fact anyone with a heartbeat and especially a government job can get credit nowadays, credit his
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Sorry, for me two paychecks a month is $10,000. If I lost my job I do not have $10,000 in the bank to cover a month of no income,
I believe the commonly stated goal is that you should have three months backup.
Perhaps a short-term goal should be for you to figure out how not to spend $10,000/month, even if you keep doing it. If you have to spend that much just to survive, then you have overextended yourself somewhere. Maybe too big a mortgage, too big a car payment, or you're a wage slave to the credit card company finance charges.
Of course, if you lost your job you become eligible for unemployment.
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If the shutdown didn't, then what did make impact with your head?