Last year during PAX East there was a certain company doing some trickery… Here are some tips on what to do, and expect in the future!
The new thing at these cons has been “Pre-order our game to get a free T-Shirt!” The biggest example of this had to be Ubisoft, with their ‘Pre-Order’ Booth.
Ubisoft had three huge titles listed to be released, Watch Dogs, Assassins Creed, and Splinter Cell. The attraction to their booth was to get t-shirts. Each game had an exclusive shirt to be given away, perfect! Everyone loves freebies! But wait, here is the sneaky deal, you had to prove first that you pre-ordered the game!
Their booth had a huge line with about 6 stations where you were taken to Amazon, and given the option to log in, and pre-order either one of the games, or all of them. Afterwards you would show the host, and get a shirt based off the game you just picked up.
With Watch Dogs still not out, and pushed for next month, I’m sure they’ll have a huge presence at PAX East this year as well, and guess what? They will ask you to pre-order again! Woo!
Now I’m sure this is a tactic other studios will pick up on in order to get a return on investment for all of the promotional materials and for booking the space at the convention too. Just be ready! for this to happen!
[label variation=”label-important”]The Workaround![/label] The solution to this is simple, just check your email, specially if its off Amazon, you are likely to get a receipt or confirmation. Then once you get home or to your hotel room…cancel it. Easy! Free shirt!Granted you might want to get your pre-order bonus (boo!) or you might actually want the game, then obviously keep it. In the situation of Watch Dogs where it was pushed however, I’d probably cancel and wait for PAX East, as its likely they will pull this method of getting pre-orders again. This way when you log into your Amazon account, you’ll be ready and wont have two copies!
