Many of us are now aware and saddened by the death of Michael Forgey, the Executive Producer at Monolith, and how the company is immortalizing him in a paid day-one DLC (Forthog Orc-Slayer) for the upcoming Shadow of War. It's a charitable effort where WB Games donates $3.50 of every purchase to Forgey's family. This is all great, although the fact that they're not donating all of it is slightly sketchy in itself, but understandable.
However, what most people do not know is that, there's a tiny, almost invisible disclaimer in the video of the DLC that WB is deliberately trying to hide as much as possible, which states the following:
Donations will be made on purchases from any 1 of the 50 U.S. or DC (but excluding purchases made from AL, HI, IL, MA, MS and SC) Void where prohibited by law. Your purchase is not tax deductible.
What this essentially means is, not only is WB Games taking majority of the profits from this DLC, (which is supposed to be a fundraiser) but if you are living outside of the US, or in a specific state, the Forgey family will get no money from these DLC purchases. All of the charity money (or what the consumer thinks is charity money) from Europe for example, goes to WB.
To reiterate, WB Games did not properly, or clearly disclose this information to the consumers, and in fact tried to hide it as much as possible, by placing the disclaimer in the video with the smallest font they could, or in the bottom of the video description which no-one ever reads. They also worded it in the way that is unclear as to what it actually means.
This is honestly a very disgusting situation where we have a publisher, that is already trying to tarnish a promising singleplayer game with loot boxes and DLC champions, but is now also taking charity money from a family that just lost a loved one and is creating controversy around those who are grieving.
Nobody wants this kind of negativity around what was clearly just supposed to be a loving tribute to someone who passed, but WB should come clean with what they're doing and give proper consumer information. Monolith just wants to make a good game, and everything WB is doing reflects badly on them, and their product.
It would be nice to see WB make some kind of positive gesture that would indicate that this is not a greedy cash grab, because we all just want a good game, and right now WB's actions are turning many people away from purchasing Shadow of War.
Most of this information came to my attention from TotalBiscuit's video, and he explains it better than I can, so go check it out:
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