10 Insane Marketing Stunts That Were Used To Sell Video Games

3. Free Petrol For Everyone! (Mercenaries 2)

Mercenaries 2
Pandemic Studios

Imagine the chaos that would ensue if petrol was made free for a limited time. Well, imagine no more, because that was the exact stunt EA pulled to promote open-world actioner Mercenaries 2: World In Flames.

The plot of the game finds players trying to murder the President of Venezuela, who has seized control of the nation's oil supply. To tie in with that story, EA concocted this oil-based marketing stunt, taking over a petrol station in north London and advertising a first come, first served giveaway amounting to around £20,000 worth of fuel.

The giveaway started at 6:30am but was shut down five hours later, with the free petrol causing dozens and dozens of cars to get caught in traffic jams in local streets. It was full-on gridlock, so the police intervened in an effort to clear up the roads and get things flowing again.

Still, plenty of happy commuters managed to nab a full tank for free, and the stunt caught the attention of the local media, before eventually going national. So in terms of getting more coverage for the game, it absolutely worked, despite the mayhem it caused.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!