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Online retailer Simply Games has criticised the media for its coverage of its decision to sell Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 early.
On Friday the retailer received stock of the game and told its customers that if they ordered before 4:30pm they were likely” to receive it the following day.
And indeed, MCV was one of many customers to receive the game on Saturday (November 10th), well ahead of its November 13th global release date.
In a statement issued to MCV Simply Games claims it was all a big mistake.
Sorry you could not reach Simply Games management on Friday. I have a good idea what you might have wanted to discuss(!) and see you ran an article anyway,” operations manager Paul Roberts stated.
Shame we missed each other as much of what was discussed on social networking sites was spurious and inaccurate – as is the nature of the beast. We would like to make the following facts clear:
1. Simply Games received its stock on Friday
2. As it was booked into stock, the stock status changed to ‘Play it tomorrow!’ – this happens automatically for any item showing as ‘In Stock’
3. Realising the confusion this was causing, this message was manually overwritten but not before an independent moderator had also misinterpreted the message on the site and had indeed supported the message with comments on Facebook. However, we must make clear that no ‘promises’ were ever made about playing the game ‘tomorrow’.
4. Any customers enquiring on Friday afternoon about delivery (and there were many hundred!), were clearly advised that were not offering a Saturday delivery on this game. This is very far from the ‘promise’ that we have been accused of making.
Simply Games regret any confusion caused by its ‘play it tomorrow’ message may have caused. It is the result of a significant product page re-design which launched only a matter of days ago. Although the only retailer being mentioned by MCV at the moment, we should draw your attention to other BO2 issues on social sites.”
It should be noted that as far as MCV can tell, few reports claimed Simply Games promised anything. Most, such as MCV, simply pointed out that customers were told there was a good chance they would get the game on Saturday. Which many, of course, did.
So if it was all an innocent mistake, why did Simply Games still ship the game out instead of hold on to the stock for another 24 hours to safeguard against early selling?
When pressed on this MCV, Roberts replied: We are not simply blaming matters on one big mistake. We were accused of making a ‘promise’ which we did NOT do. It was regrettable confusion caused by a recently re-worked web page and as you know, we manually adjusted things as soon as we were aware it was causing confusion.”
MCV is continuing to try and get a satisfactory answer to the question.
