The Launch Dilemma of Zero Time Dilemma

The 999 series has been one of the most critically acclaimed and cherished cult series of the past decade. Originally debuting in 2009 in Japan and a year later in the U.S., it told the crazy time-and-reality-bending tale of nine people kidnapped and forced to engage in a life-or-death room escape game. After Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward was a financial disappointment, fans were left for years believing the series would forever remain unfinished. That is, until July of 2015 when the final chapter of the series was announced to much anticipation.To celebrate the launch of Zero Time Dilemma, Aksys sold a "Limited Watch Bonus Edition" for the Vita through both Amazon and Gamestop. A year later, that decision would turn what should have been one of the most celebrated goodwill releases of 2016 into a public relations disaster that has hundreds of fans decrying Aksys and its partnering retailers.

The situation began on June 24th, when Aksys’s official Twitter account sent out the following Tweets:

Further reassurances were offered by Aksys’s Senior Sales and Marketing Manager Dan Halen:

With every indication that games would still be delivered on time, reaction to this news was fairly positive. Things were fairly quiet until a Tweet went out on the 26th:

With release day, the 28th, now approaching, both Aksys's Twitter account as well as Dan Halen's account started to indicate they did not have as much control over the situation as they had initially indicated. At this point, Halen Tweeted that Amazon had stopped responding to his texts and calls. On this same day, Aksys's official account seemed to lay blame for any release day shipping issues on Amazon:

Tuesday the 28th finally arrived, and customers quickly noticed that their orders were not being fulfilled by either Gamestop or Amazon. Separate threads on Gamefaqs, NeoGaf, and our own thread on Giant Bomb among other sites started to fill up with various complaints. Ire toward Amazon in particular quickly grew fierce. Some customers were receiving emails asking for approval to delay shipment of the game, while others received nothing. Customers who tried contacting Amazon Customer Service had wildly inconsistent experiences. For the most part, customers reported general confusion from the various representatives they spoke with. If Amazon was aware of the situation, they did not appear to pass this information down to the people who needed it.

By the afternoon, Aksys was forced to admit that, in fact, Amazon had only received some of the shipment they needed to fill their pre-orders.

Reaction was needless to say not terribly positive to this. By this point, Aksys’s attempts to communicate the issue had only led to further confusion. In addition, they had, if not entirely intentionally, thrown one of their retail partners under the bus for a problem they were not responsible for. Important to note is at the time of writing this article, the Tweets on the 28th were the last Tweets sent out by Aksys or Dan Halen on the subject.

On June 29th, Amazon finally broke its silence on the issue when it sent out the following notification to customers:

We're contacting you about your order for Zero Time Dilemma: Limited Watch Bonus Edition Vita. We recently learned of an unexpected delay in getting the Limited Edition Bonus watch included in your order from our supplier. We’ll be shipping the game without the bonus watch and will ship the bonus watch as soon as it becomes available. We're very sorry about this.

….

To help make up for the inconvenience, we've added a $10 promotional certificate to your account. This amount will automatically apply the next time you buy an eligible item shipped and sold by Amazon.com.

So it seemed as if a resolution was finally coming. Unfortunately, not much has changed since that point in time. Despite the inference that copies of the game would soon be shipped out to those who ordered the Limited Watch Edition, only those who ordered the standard edition have had their copies shipped to them.

As someone who pre-ordered the Limited Edition Vita version, I decided to try contacting Amazon this morning to see if there was any additional information on what was going on. After speaking with three customer service reps, one who was from "Amazon’s Leadership Team," I was unable to even get as far as many of the customers who contacted them earlier in the week. In fact, I couldn’t even get one of the three reps to seemingly acknowledge the actual problem. Despite showing each of them the email I received from Amazon, explaining the whole messy situation, and showing them that the standard edition was in stock on the web site, the only thing each representative kept repeating to me was the Watch Edition was not in stock, that they had no information, and that they would not look further into it. If I can take a moment to editorialize just a bit, I’ve worked both ends of a Help Desk, and let me tell you, nothing sets off already on-the-edge people than giving them an impression you just want them to go away. But two of the reps did throw me a $10 store credit to try to get me to go away, so there's that.

As for Gamestop, less has publicly been stated regarding the situation there. Based on various Tweets and message board posts, some customers are reporting receiving a notification saying Gamestop will send the game out soon and will send the watch out at a later date. Other customers more recently have begun reporting that their orders have been cancelled. The last Tweet from an Aksys representative regarding the situation at Gamestop was on the 27th.

While the situation has been bad with the Limited Watch Edition, even the regular edition of the game has been somewhat difficult to find. Best Buy’s website has listed the Vita version as out of stock since launch and even the 3DS edition now reads the same. Gamestop's website has stock of both editions of the game, but in-store copies of the Vita version have proven somewhat difficult to locate. Based on the web site, neither of my local Gamestops have the game in stock. Two within fifteen miles do, and another four do between forty and fifty minutes away.

For some, the most tone-deaf moment came when Aksys's PR rep announced on Twitter that a small batch of Limited Edition watches would be on sale at Anime Expo.

While the roughly two-hundred watches anticipated to be available would hardly cover pre-orders, it left already jaded fans justifiably miffed that these were not being used to cover customers who had already made purchases. To be fair, the profits of these watches will most likely not come close to recouping whatever lost money Aksys has already incurred from these events.

So many basic PR faux paus have been committed by at least one party during this entire series of events. From publicly blaming business partners, releasing incomplete and inaccurate information just leading to further confusion, not taking ownership of the issue, not being able to get everyone on message, and so on, it has been a perfect storm of every way you’re not supposed to handle a crisis. To make matters worse, we’ve gone from confusing messaging to no messaging whatsoever in the past two days other than Gamestop’s seeming reverse direction in cancelling pre-orders. It's not right to speculate on what went wrong as none of us have the information to do so, though I will say it's possible Aksys didn't understand what they were asking Amazon and Gamestop to do as inventory/sales systems don't always handle what they were asking in the cleanest of ways.

It is unfortunate that a game born out of wanting to please a small group of loyal fans has been marred by these events. And unlike so many recent video game launch issues, none of this is the fault of the game's developers. Early reviews for the game are quite positive. The game currently sits at 87 on Metacritic for the Vita version and 82 for the 3DS version, and 98% of Steam user reviews are positive. One can’t help but feel for Spike Chunsoft which took a big risk even putting out a third game in a series that had never been a smash hit for the studio, and quite clearly they deserve none of what has happened. Zero Time Dilemma’s U.S. release should have been a slam dunk of good will for everyone involved. Instead, it will go down as one of the most bungled video game launches in recent memory.