It's hard to imagine the circumstances in which yoinking your pre-order bonus less than a week after launch would be considered a really good PR move. Nonetheless, this is the peculiar position Treyarch found themselves in when they removed the Nuketown 2025 playlist last night - a multiplayer mode dedicated to the exclusive bonus map - leaving the content only playable in unranked custom games.
As Treyarch's game design director David Vonderhaar tweeted yesterday: "Double XP weekend is official over. That means Nuketown 2025 / 24-7 is as well. I know. RIGHT? Don't kill the messenger. [...] Nuketown 2025 / 24-7 will be back for special events. You can always play it with your friends in Custom Games."
The internet, however, was not feeling merciful. (Sample Twitter response to Vonderhaar's message: "FUCK YOU") And shortly thereafter Treyarch launched a new "fast-action" playlist called Chaos Moshpit, featuring none other than the Nuketown 2025 map.
And quite right, too. Nuketown may be one of the egregiously awful multiplayer maps ever made - a mindless mosh-pit in which players plough into each other with no semblance of tactical thought - but nonetheless, out of my obligation as a reviewer, I did pay an extra £15 so I could play its reincarnation as a Black Ops 2 pre-order/deluxe bonus. £15 should buy me more than a weekend of access to the content in ranked playlists - leaving it accessible in custom matches is death by obscurity.
The value of pre-order bonuses is dubious at the best of times, and this can hardly improve customer confidence.
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