Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 2)

[Jansen]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/so-uh-i-won-square-enix-games-for-life-at-a-pax-pannel-9-years-ago-and-square-enix-just-started-ghosting-me-unsure-how-to-proceed.1400080/

As some of you may or may not know, a little over 9 years ago I won "Square Enix Games for life". The story on how it happened was:



I attended PAX West 2016. One of the panels there was for Tomb Raider celebrating it's 20th anniversary and promoting the PS4 release of Rise of the Tomb Raider. If you remember, Rise was originally a timed Xbox One exclusive and Rise released on PS4 a year later which happened to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the series and the PS4 version was called "Rise of the Tomb Raider 20 Year Celebration" and included extra content like a PSVR mode for Croft Manor and whatnot. Square Enix owned Crystal Dynamics and the Tomb Raider franchise at that point. This was before they sold it to Embracer.



I like Tomb Raider so I decided to go to the panel and they decided to give away prizes at this panel and one of the prizes was Square Enix Games for Life. For some reason they didn't advertise they were giving away anything let alone "Square Enix Games for Life" so the panel room was not even half full. Greg Miller was hosting the panel and near the beginning of the panel he asks everyone to look under their seat and under some seats are cards with prizes. Art Books, Plushes, Games, other random stuff and under one seat is "Square Enix Games for Life"



So everyone looks under their seats, several people yank off "Do not remove under penalty of law" upholstery tags, other people have cards with various prizes on them. One of the Crystal Dynamics devs says "Hey there are probably some cards under the empty seats over there(points to the right side of the panel room that was basically empty as everyone was on the left side closer to the panel) so you might want to check under those seats at the end of the panel. So far everyone stays put. Then Greg says "Of look now if you want, I don't care" and that was all the permission everyone needed. Myself and a few other people with no shame got up and went over to the empty rows. I picked an empty row, got down on all 4's and crawled across the row looking for cards. I saw one in the row behind mine, stood up, leaned over to get it and knocked over a couple chairs in the row I was hunting in crashing into the empty row behind. People start laughing at me and rightly so! I grab the card, get up and start my walk of shame back to my original seat without even looking at the card yet.



I get back to my seat, the panel starts proper and I look and I see this is what was on my card:







Under that piece of paper is an email to contact.



At the end of the panel, prize winners are told to come up to receive our prizes. I go up and say "Hey I won free games for life". They congratulate me, take my picture and tell me to email the address on the card. If they posted anything publicly, I never saw it.



I email the email address attaching the above photo and the person who's email is on that card forwards me to someone else at Square Enix who is responsible for fulfilling the prize. They ask me if I would like physical or digital copes. I say physical and they send me a care package with a handful of games they had on hand at the time. I remember one of them was Life Is Strange, another was whatever Deus Ex game came out that year and a couple more. Then from that day on, every time a game came out I would email them, ask for it, and they would overnight Fedex it from their LA offices.



The parameters of the prize though not explicitly stated on the card were "Square Enix published games". So that meant stuff like Bravely Default didn't count because it was Published by Nintendo, but Square Enix published a ton of games in North America for European developers/publishes that didn't have North America infrastructure. I got a bunch of Deep Silver games including Shenmue 3, a bunch of Milestone racing games among others as examples.



Along the way they stopped mailing me games and started emailing me codes instead for obvious reasons. Those codes were usually for the Digital Deluxe Editions or whatever the highest tier digital version available was. I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect my prize was being fulfilled through whatever internal mechanism Square Enix had to give staff free copies of games they worked on or something.



Anyway, everything has been smooth as butter for the past 9 years. The same person has been providing me the games the entire time. The last code I got was for DQ 1+ 2 HD2D. back at the end of Oct. and I'm Canadian so after I got the code I replied "Thanks, PS Go Blue Jays!" and they replied "NOOO Go Dodgers!" so everything seemed fine.



Fast forward 1 month and I email for a code for Octopath Traveler 0 and I get no response. I email a week later. No response. I email a couple weeks later again, no response. I was expecting them to goat about the Dodgers, not no response.



So I am kind of at a loss here. My emails are not bouncing. So I do not know what happened. Did the person I was emailing change jobs or are on an extended leave and the person handling their inbox has absolutely no clue who I am and has seen each email and said "Who the fuck is krae_man and why would I send them a code?", or did Square Enix tell them "Don't send krae_man anymore codes and just ghost them"? I have no idea.



Where's Lionel Hutz when you need him?







TL:DR



Won Squre Enix games for life 9 years ago. Been ghosted since about a month ago.