After a raucous spate of now-deleted tweets, the official Need For Speed Twitter account (opens in new tab) has woken up with a head full of regrets. After insulting a fan who criticised the upcoming Need For Speed: Unbound (opens in new tab), the account has posted an official apology and promised to do better, which presumably means it won’t call someone “milkshake brain” ever again.
We admit we got a bit caught up in the hype for launch and some of our recent social media replies crossed the line. To those fans we upset, we apologize. We will do better. See you here next week.November 23, 2022
The exchange that prompted the apology took place last Monday, after a fan complained about an offer for Need For Speed: Unbound that gave players who pre-ordered 3 days’ early access to the game. The NFS Twitter account responded in a, ah, less-than-decorous way, telling the fan to “cry about it bro or buy regular price idc,” before eventually declaring “I’m not reading all that, sorry that happened to you or congratulations”.
This “edgy” EA social media employee is embarrassing…HAVE YOU NOT LEARNED ANYTHING?! pic.twitter.com/taVMVfoG3uNovember 22, 2022
Not exactly Public Relations 101. You’ll notice that these tweets only exist in the form of screenshots. That’s because, at some point between the argument and the apology, the offending posts from the NFS account were deleted. Probably for the best, but this being the internet, people saved backups almost as soon as the tweets went live.
It’s not clear if the operator of the NFS Twitter page thought they were being endearingly cheeky, or if they were just fed up ministering to fan complaints and decided to go out in a blaze of glory. Either way, I can’t imagine that exhorting a displeased potential buyer to “cry about it bro” is going to win any customer service awards in the near future.
Need For Speed: Unbound releases next week on Steam (opens in new tab), the EA App (née Origin) (opens in new tab), and the Epic Games Store (opens in new tab). It looks alright in gameplay we’ve seen so far (opens in new tab), although those cars definitely seem to handle like toys, which could displease the racing purists out there. They look like toys, too, but that’s less of a problem since you can turn off the sparkly effects if they’re too “anime” (opens in new tab) for you. I wouldn’t do that, though. Seems like a milkshake brain move.