Dead Island Riptide Special Edition Features Dismembered Female Torso (Really)

Making the early play for “Bone-headed PR Stunt of the Year”, Dead Island Riptide dev Deep Silver has announced plans to release a 12” dismembered torso statue as the centerpiece of their so-called “Zombie-Bait Edition”. Predictably, this gruesome sculpture has been met with revulsion and bewilderment, prompting this response via Deep Silver’s Twitter.

We deeply apologize for any offense caused by the Dead Island Riptide “Zombie Bait Edition”, the collector’s edition announced for Europe and Australia. Like many gaming companies, Deep Silver has many offices in different countries, which is why sometimes different versions of Collector’s Editions come into being for North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

For the limited run of the Zombie Bait Edition for Europe and Australia, a decision was made to include a gruesome statue of a zombie torso, which was cut up like many of our fans had done to the undead enemies in the original Dead Island.

We sincerely regret this choice. We are collecting feedback continuously from the Dead Island community, as well as the international gaming community at large, for ongoing internal meetings with Deep Silver’s entire international team today. For now, we want to reiterate to the community, fans and industry how deeply sorry we are, and that we are committed to making sure this will never happen again.

At a time where misogyny in gaming is under greater scrutiny than ever, and just weeks after one of the most horrific massacres in memory, it really begs the question: what the hell were they thinking? Or perhaps more troubling still, the idea that this is exactly how it was meant to play out.

After all, they did give us a warning.