Gearbox’s “Customer Appreciation” Debacle: A Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Non-Review

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Nicole Kline

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This is where my review of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel would be, if I had received the game on time. I received a free code for the game – a “Certificate of Appreciation” – from Gearbox when I went to their panel at PAX East. PAX Prime attendees of their panel also got Certificates. But many people who received these Certificates are just now getting game codes – or still waiting for them – three days after the game was released.

Some Reddit users – here and here – don’t have the game yet. They’ve emailed support, and have gotten what seem to be personalized responses – except many of them got the same exact emails:

Thank you for contacting 2K Support, I’m sorry to hear you still haven’t received your code.

Hyperion tech support informs us that Claptrap tried to “improve” the PAX code give-away, so we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
A new code will be send to your email address. We suggest you verify your inbox for an email from us. In the event that there is still a problem, please update this ticket.
Thank you.

Farzad S, 2K Support

I went back and forth on Twitter with half a dozen people, lamenting that we had contacted support and gotten either no message at all or a message saying to be patient:

Randy Pitchford even sent us a condescending reply:

He sent us a link to customer support, asking us if we’d tried that. Seeing as much of our conversation was about customer support and their lack of any actual “support,” Pitchford either hadn’t read or tweets – or was just not really interested in helping. Meanwhile, everyone was getting messages from Gearbox just telling us to be patient and that our code would be sent out “with the next batch”:

Hi Nicole,
Since you only just recently redeemed your code, you should be receiving your code with the next batch of codes.

Cheers,
Avi G.
2K Support

Which is apparently what they’re doing right now, instead of sending out actual codes:

Some gave up and bought it:

But I think I’m most in agreement with @steve_friction:

It’s three days later, and I’ve finally got my code. Others on Twitter have finally gotten theirs as well:

But still, the damage has been done. This whole experience has been intensely frustrating. I’m a huge fan of Borderlands, and had I known it would take this long to get the game, I would have pre-ordered the game myself. I’m not saying I’m ungrateful for what Gearbox is doing for its fans, but their idea of “appreciation” is a very strange one. Why has there been absolutely no word from Gearbox or 2K on this delay of codes for what they consider to be some of their best customers? What’s with the silence and, when the silence is broken by customer support, the utter lack of any kind of personal communication? What is going on here, guys?

Anyway, this is where my review would be, if I had gotten the game on time. I would have surely beaten it by now, and would have started it over again with my boyfriend, both of us using different characters. I would be writing here about how exciting it was to get back into the world of the Vault Hunter, and what a great time I had on the moon. I would be still riding the high of joy.

Here’s where I would argue that either the game was just “Borderlands 2.5,” or that it was a true “Borderlands 3.” I’d give reasons as to why I felt that way, and talk about what made it feel old (probably something about the Borderlands 2 engine) and what made it feel new (like butt stomping and the new ice element). I would talk about it followed in the franchise’s footsteps and was initially too easy, or if the difficulty was ramped up, as some of my friends have been suggesting to me.

This is where I would talk about character classes and the new trees that came with them. I would talk about what I liked and didn’t like about whatever character I’d played. I’d talk about how much fun part of the tree was, and whether or not their ability was too much like one found in a previous game. I would try not to let Claptrap dominate the discussion, since it seems like everyone’s talking about that crazy little robot. But most of all, I’d probably be talking about how much I wanted to stop writing and get back to the game, because it was that much fun.

Here’s where I’d talk about the characters themselves, and their interactions. I’d talk about NPCs, and my opinions on Jack. I’m assuming that I’ll somehow start to like Jack, though I doubt it. I hate him too much from Borderlands 2. I’d probably also mention how much I missed the characters from Borderlands 2, and how much I loved their interactions, because I did. But mostly I’d just talk about Jack, I wager.

I’d definitely talk about the soundtrack, and how I felt about it. I loved the music in the first two games, and I’m hoping that continues to be the case in this game. I’d talk about how different areas and their music will never be forgotten, like the awesome music in Caustic Caverns and how haunted I feel whenever I listen to the soundtrack. I would say whether or not this soundtrack was one worth owning.

I’d talk a lot about whether or not you should buy the game. I’d probably mention the Season Pass, and whether or not I was excited about it. I’d talk about every other little thing I could think of from the game – any humor I found especially appealing, or whether or not it existed. I’d talk about how tired my butt was from sitting on my couch, but how I couldn’t wait to get back to it – or not. If I didn’t like the game, chances are I would have put it down and started up on Borderlands 2 again instead, or started playing some other game in my backlog.

But I can’t speak to any of those things yet. It took Gearbox three days to get me the game; right now I’m just hoping the code works and that, if it does, it won’t take too long to download. There are still disappointed people out there – I’m not sure how many people exactly; without a coherent way to get us all together, there’s no real way of knowing. If you haven’t gotten your code from Gearbox yet, please comment here, and hopefully they’ll see how much of a debacle this has been – and how much they’ve hurt some of their biggest fans.

So, instead of a review, this is where all my disappointment goes, towards Gearbox and 2K. This is where all my frustration from the last few days goes. This is where all of my excitement that I’ve had since the game was announced has been diluted and turned into a loss of faith in one of my favorite developers. I give the game, and the company, a 0.

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Nicole Kline is Warp Zoned's Senior Editor. She first began preparing for the job by climbing a milk crate to play Centipede in an arcade. You can find her on PSN under the name toitle or you can email her at nicole AT warpzoned DOT com.