10 Video Game Promotional Tactics That Backfired HORRIBLY

Dante’s Inferno is a largely underrated 2010 action game that adapted the Divine Comedy, using strong religious and adult imagery.

To ramp up to the title, EA developed an extensive array of marketing plans that played into the seven deadly sins. One of these included delivering a wooden box to press that would continuously Rickroll them until they smashed it with a provided hammer, committing the sin of wrath.

It was at least successful in getting the game talked about. However, EA were clearly unhappy with the lack of feather-rustling the game had done… and so decided to cry wolf.

At E3 2009, a protest of around 20 people arrived with picket signs to call EA “Electronic Anti-Christ” and make their distaste for the game known. This coincided with the launch of a website that shared the same views, with Web 1.0 style design and bad grammar to boot. Naturally, this was all in the name of promotion but this fake backlash wound up creating real backlash when Christian groups took umbrage with the way EA portrayed them.

The website and remarks at the protest did certainly inflate a negative stereotype of Christians as, in the words of InsideCatholic’s Margaret Cabaniss, “all priggish, thin-skinned fun-killers”. Either way, people on the whole were not particularly amused by EA shouting fire where there wasn’t any.