Dead Island: Riptide announces limited edition bikini torso, immediately apologises for it
By Tim Colwill on January 16, 2013 at 11:51 am
Overnight, Deep Silver announced a limited edition of Dead Island: Riptide and revealed that it would come with, among other things, a “grotesque take on an iconic Roman bust”. Or, in other words, a statue of… some boobs. In a bikini. With a bunch of skin flayed off.
This naturally drew the ire of basically everybody who saw it, and Deep Silver have now issued an apology for the statue, saying “For the limited run of the Zombie Bait Edition for Europe and Australia, a decision was made to include a gruesome statue of a zombie torso, which was cut up like many of our fans had done to the undead enemies in the original Dead Island.”
“We sincerely regret this choice. We are collecting feedback continuously from the Dead Island community, as well as the international gaming community at large, for ongoing internal meetings with Deep Silver’s entire international team today. For now, we want to reiterate to the community, fans and industry how deeply sorry we are, and that we are committed to making sure this will never happen again.”
Genuinely poor judgement, or calculated marketing stunt? We may never know.
Dead Island: Riptide customers sent Steam codes for Dark Souls instead
Maybe they're better off?
Controversial Dead Island collectible hits shelves
Riptide torso released despite publisher’s apology.
Dead Island Riptide reviewed (PC): Underwhelming, by-the-numbers fan-service
There's not enough new content here to justify the price tag.
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looks cool to me
I’m not offended
Lol
God-dayum! Best limited edition accessory I’ve ever seen.
They should stand their ground and keep it.
People have the choice of not buying the limited edition after all. :P
It’s nice to see Techland/Deep Silver hitting it big with this franchise, I thought they might have gone bust after they released Chrome and then dropped into obscurity.
Thankfully Dead Island sold 5+ million copies, so they have no excuse for the excessive bugs this time around. :)
Who wants to bet the bulk of people whinging about it aren’t even people who would play the game.
Do want!
Though I prefer natural to silicon…
This is only cool if there is a male and female one available…
No different to the images depicted in the game…..
Obviously not suitable for youngin’s though.
Seriously guys? This is not only creepy as hell (not in a scary, zombie way, but a sex/gore psychopath sort of way) but it’s also incredibly tacky. Who would want this in their house?
I don’t see this as creepy or tacky. And why the sex/gore psychopath relation? are you saying seeing this makes you want to have sex with a statue? Cause it aint doing that for me.
James Pinnell,
plus it looks like a sex toy.
@Kinky see above
Yeah, you read into that statement in entirely the wrong way.
The sexualisation of violence is pretty much where I draw my personal line. But I’m sure this thing wouldn’t sell if it was was just a torn shirt.
Would keep it next to the front door for the annoying door knockers to see
Arguing that the statue is fine because you don’t want to have sex with it, and trying to turn the argument around by suggesting that James does, is ridiculous. Saying ‘hey this is sexualised’ isn’t so much revealing one’s true colours as it is pointing out the bleeding obvious.
James Pinnell,
Completely agree, was about to say the same thing. It’s just simply fricken weird and disturbing. If common sense was more common this wouldn’t have even been a thing.
If they remove this there goes any chance of me buying it
James Pinnell,
Maybe I did read into your statement wrong. But I wasn’t the one who initially broached the subject.
This entire ‘thing’ as exe3 puts it, simply comes down to a subjective view of an object. Some people see it weird and disturbing, sex/gore related etc. some people don’t have a problem with it. Common sense would actually be knowing this from the get go.
Marketing genius at its best…
OH LOOK SOMETHING OFFENDS ME ON THE INTERNET, BETTER STAY HERE AND PROTEST HOW i FEEL!!!
Come on, just hit Ye’old google up and find something that does not offend you… like cats… or trees…. damn xD
Screw people who get offended.
I want this, it looks awesome, if they don’t want one, they are well within their rights to not buy one!
Also…
James Pinnell,
I would buy it still if it was a shirt. It’s a greusome awesome thing that zombie fans like myself would love.
Hooray to getting offended over something that’s in the game anyway.
Keith Urban offends me on a level I cannot put into words, but I’m not internet raging that no one should be allowed to sell his music.
stoplikingthingsidontlike.jpg etc. etc.
Hooray for everyone assuming that anyone against the thing is offended by it…
Personally my issue with it isn’t that it’s a zombie girl in a bikini, it’s that it consists solely of a torso graphically missing its head and arms, that’s freaking grotesque man. Had it been a figurine of a zombie girl in a bikini with maybe 1 arm missing then everything would be A-OK in my book but as just a torso that I assume would be of a reasonably large size and is meant to sit around your house it’s disturbing.
Disturbing is the right word. I wonder at people who can’t see that it is just that…
For me the problem is that it’s basically just their marketing department said “Man, you know what gamers love? Boobs, lol” and then drew this up.
Calling it “an iconic roman bust” is hilarious. This is what an iconic roman bust of a woman looks like:
This is just “Hey here are some boobs, you gamers! You guys love boobs!”
I mean hell this thing they’re trying to sell us literally chops off all the parts of a woman that might distract from the (perfect, untouched) boobs. If the boobs on the statue were torn up and mangled then I think everyone would be pretty grossed out (and rightfully so!). The fact that they’re perfectly untouched while the rest of it is ripped up should be pretty telling as to the intent of this. You can bet if this “iconic roman bust” was of a man there’d be huge gouges across the chest and bone showing and stuff.
I think this whole thing is super interesting on a number of levels actually.
I guess you just have to expect the (assumed) lowest common denominator to dictate what marketing people will throw at us.
I feel kind of cheapened by the idea that someone thinks I’ll love this thing.
NSFW LINK REMOVED BY TIM: Dude, don’t post that please.
Hah I was about to say that, then after clicking realised there still isn’t an edit button.
But you’ve beaten me to it!
EDIT: oh wait, what! there’s an edit button!
Damn, now i’m curious about what was posted. :(
Tim Colwill,
Welcome to the horror genre!
There is!
*ghost wail*
another roman bust
edit: that’s not even mentioning the one that is a literally just penis with angel-wings.
I remember doing a double take in high school when I read that Julius Caesar literally had a gigantic phallus built and mounted on a carriage so he could ride next to it during a victory parade. Romans were strange.
Those boobs are too good to be zombie boobs so it is simply some young lady fresh hacked up corpse, serial killer style. Make it more zombie like and hey yeah it’s just some tasteless trinket that some will purchase for the express view of appearing, or actually being tasteless, rather than the “boobs are good, omg hot zombie boobs on torso, theme that that statue is going for.
But seriously this “marketing genius stunt” trend that game companies are taking nowdays ( ie hello IO and the whole Hitman debacle) needs to step down a notch, not all gamers want to be depicted as creepy people with anti-social behaviours.
I say this pretty much every freaking time there’s outrage about something as trivial as this.
Who. The. Fuck. Cares?
If you don’t like it, don’t buy it – it’s hardly hurting anyone.
“Yes, hello, I would like a torn up woman with my video game, please.”
lol , sooo many little whinging bitches these days , dont like it dont buy it, but why ruin it for people who may have wanted it? I wont touch the game with a ten foot pole after playing the first and i think the torsos kinda weird n stuff but i dont understand the butthurt over it ,get over it… do-gooders have way too much time to spare.
bishopoz,
It’s the people who actually would want it on their mantle piece that worry me, not the fact that it is been sold in the first place. However I suppose that the two are quite closely related…