Square Enix Invents Horribly Insulting Facebook Promotion for Hitman: Absolution, Subsequently Apologizes

Oh Hitman: Absolution, you are too good of a game to have been as terribly marketed as you have been. I'm sure we all remember the Agent 47 kills sexy nuns for some reason trailer debacle from earlier this year, and now Square Enix has a new poorly-thought-out campaign to make amends for, which it already began doing within hours of anyone noticing it.

The concept in question was Square Enix's delightfully death-threat-laden Hire Hitman campaign for Facebook users. In the campaign, those with Facebook accounts could essentially craft a custom death threat for any Facebook user it saw fit. Okay, so that's generally awkward enough on its own, except that it also came with a remarkably offensive series of traits one could use to identify their "targets," and reasons for elimination. You could identify targets by noting their "tiny penis" or "small tits," and then decide they should die because they have "terrible taste in music" or for cheating on their partner. Lovely.

For its part, Rock, Paper, Shotgun has already pretty well covered the emotional spectrum one might feel when first learning of such a reprehensibly ill-conceived...thing. And within a breath of their story going up, Square Enix pulled the app, releasing an apologetic, if perhaps unnecessarily punny statement that read, in part, "We were wide of the mark with the app and following feedback from the community we decided the best thing to do was remove it completely and quickly. This we’ve now done."

So, Square Enix did a stupid, offensive thing, then realized it did a stupid, offensive thing and pulled it. That's great, though I am still left bewildered and wondering how this made it past the chain of approvals in the first place. Who looks at a Facebook app where you can call people out for their regrettable genitalia (among other insulting things) and threaten them with (fictional) murder, and says, "Yes! This is the direction our marketing campaign needs!"

Someone who probably shouldn't be in charge of marketing products anymore, that's who.

COOL

EDIT: I've been waiting so long for this day, and then I just get it randomly! I'd like to thank the academy, mom and dad, the flying spaghetti monster, and all the little people who've made this possible!

WOW

that seems beyond dumb.

Maybe they should just...stop.

It's a shame such a good game is being screwed over like this.

This sounds amazing; I love you, insane marketing.

Who's bright idea was to make that? At least Square responded quickly and took it down.

This is too stupid for me to be that offended. But Jesus Christ guys. What the fuck were you thinking?

Wow was this seriously a thing? How could this EVER be considered a good idea?

I can only imagine what marketing they have for Tomb Raider next year :/

So lame this got pulled. You win again over sensitive PC kids!

yikes

Sounds like someone deserves a promotion at Square Enix!

Perfect fucking timing.

WUT

How could the people in charge think that was totally ok? Just baffling.

@JasonR86 said:

This is too stupid for me to be that offended. But Jesus Christ guys. What the fuck were you thinking?

lol, that's exactly what I was thinking.

@TekZero said:

I put out a hit on my wife. Now she won't like my posts anymore. #firstworldproblems

death threats aren't exactly the height of comedy dude.

@TekZero: This whole "first world problems" thing is really getting tiring. It's become just an excuse for assholes to dismiss everything rather than engage in legitimate discussion.

Could they just run the same ad campaign they had for blood money. That one was very well executed. Sorry I mean to say Exzecuable.

look the hole trailer killing nuns debacle was stupid, they were not nuns they were dressed sorta like nuns. like a halloween s/m nun dress more or less and people overreacted in the most stupid way over something so far from what they were claiming. at least that how i see it.

but this...

this is just some marketing thinking they were edgy. but its tasteless in so many ways imo

Clearly this article was only written as a cover for Alex to air his tiny penis insecurities!

Hopefully those in charge of sacking are also sacked as the non-apology issued by Square-Enix makes it clear that they have no idea that they did anything wrong.

From the RPS article:

“Earlier today we launched an app based around Hitman: Absolution that allowed you to place virtual hits on your Facebook friends. Those hits would only be viewable by the recipient and could only be sent to people who were confirmed friends.

We were wide of the mark with the app and following feedback from the community we decided the best thing to do was remove it completely and quickly. This we’ve now done.

We’re sorry for any offence caused by this.”

@iAmJohn said:

Clearly this article was only written as a cover for Alex to air his tiny penis insecurities!

...I guess he's upset about that death threat I sent him.

@Link43130 said:

So lame this got pulled. You win again over sensitive PC kids!

Yeah, how else am I going to make fun of people's penis size on the internet! Gosh, everyone who hates this is such a whiner! I just want to insult people and then threaten them with death, especially on a website that's used by everyone from children to businessmen and everyone in between! How else will people know how hilarious I am, aside from killing someone who listens to Justin Beebz?

But really, is this your idea of a good way to spend time? Maybe it's time to take a step back and look at the words you're saying. There's a time and a place for idiocy, and this was neither of those, on top of being devoid of creativity and terribly un-funny.

I have no words.

Hahaha, I'll go against the grain here and say that this is fucking awesome.

So that's not okay

"Someone who probably shouldn't be in charge of marketing products anymore, that's who."

Exactly.

Lovely!

I think someone was just sick of their job and wanted to collect unemployment.

We're all talking about it. Maybe the plan was to put up a stupid facebook ap for an hour and then watch as the stories dominated the gaming news day. I mean, no one is dumb enough to think that people were going to embrace this, right?

Oh goddamnit Giant Bomb, you're just as gullible as NeoGAF, this was clearly a marketing ploy to get people talking, I mean come on!!! Now you're talking about it after it pretty much dropped off the radar, mission accomplished. *thumbs up Square*

I wonder who's next to reel in the gullible masses, will it be irrational? Rockstar? or maybe even Square again, come on folks, stop being so outraged at every single fucking thing.

I guess this shows that, once again, you don't really need to be intelligent to land a job.

You just need connections and a little bit of luck.

Jesus

I can only imagine what marketing they have for Tomb Raider next year :/

H- how? How? How. HOW? Hoooooooow.

The world "how" has now lost meaning.

Wow, how fucking stupid can that marketing team get?

This... I can't believe someone actually thought this was a good idea! This is the worst!

@NMC2008: If this was a ploy to get people talking, it's a remarkably short-sighted one. Everyone will forget about this in a couple of days, and those that do remember will just have a bitter taste in their mouth.

There is such a thing as bad publicity, believe it or not.

Great, another great app gone.

@NMC2008: Considering everything that's being done about sexism in gaming at the moment, the only thing stupider than running an campaign like this, would be if they actually did it on purpose.

@NMC2008 said:

I wonder who's next to reel in the gullible masses, will it be irrational? Rockstar? or maybe even Square again, come on folks, stop being so outraged at every single fucking thing.

Everybody and their dog knows GTA 1982908 and BioShock 3: Back To The Well are both amazing games already because the trailers say so!!!!! GOTYs!!!

What kind of coke party was going on over a Square Enix when this thing was created and put into place?
 
I mean, first you need someone dumb enough to think of it. 
You then need people in management positions agreeing that it is a good idea.
And then you need employees actually creating this campaign and putting it up.
 
And during this entire process, nobody thought "Hey, this is fucking insane."  ?  Kind of a condemnation of the company really.

Welp, that was an incredibly stupid thing to do.

I just... I can't believe we live in a world where this was a) allowed to happen and b) is being defended by some people.

Man.

How the fuck did anyone think this was a good idea.

Marketing people are stupid.

@Tsai: "Select which of your female Facebook friends YOU'D most like to protect from harm and we'll send you a free DLC code!"

What happened to the people responsible for marketing former Eidos properties? In my day, all they did was lean on internet editorial sites until they fired employees for giving their games bad reviews. None of this reprehensible bullshit.