As a journalist writing about games, I'm used to getting a lot of weird stuff from public relations companies in the mail (and giving it away in charity drives). But the package that Ubisoft PR sent to the offices of Australia's Ninemsn was weird enough to cause an evacuation of the offices today.
According to reports, a courier dropped off a small black safe to a reporter at Ninemsn's central Syndey offices, along with a letter instructing the reporter to check his voicemail. Since the reporter did not actually have a voicemail to check, he simply typed in the PIN code taped to the top of the safe, causing it to start beeping. Fearing that the package might actually be a bomb, editors decided to evacuate the newsroom and call in the bomb squad.
The safe contained a copy of Watch Dogs, along with a baseball cap and beanie. It's not clear whether the safe was sent by Ubisoft or an external PR agency.
“We did check with other newsrooms to see if they had received a similar package as we thought it was a PR stunt, but no one else had," Ninemsn editor Hal Crawford told Australian media site Mumbrella. "We weren’t panicked at any point, but given there was no note explaining what it was, we had to take sensible precautions."
This isn't the first time a gaming PR mailing has gone wrong. Back in 2009, EA sent critics a set of brass knuckles in violation of laws about sending weapons through the mail, before asking for the "novelty" back. Also in 2009, EA promoted the Dante's Inferno game by sending journalists a $200 check intended to test their resistance to "greed." At the time, I commented that the stunt crossed "the line between 'clever promotion' and 'blatant journalist bribery.'"
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