No Vindictus? Denied!

Nexon’s new free-to-play blood & guts fest Vindictus has just started an early access beta, and every MMO site under the sun is handing out beta keys like candy.

What would have been a good idea, however, would be to prefix the announcements and giveaways with a giant message saying “USA AND CANADA ONLY!”

The giveaway I snagged a key from didn’t mention any territory restrictions.

The page where you enter your key didn’t mention any territory restrictions.

The Nexon passport signup page clearly says “To register for a Nexon Passport, you must live in the United States, Canada, and Oceania. Access to Nexon America games is not supported outside these regions.” I’ll confess I didn’t read that fine print, but since I live in Oceania, even if I had, I would have obviously felt that I was still on the right track.

It’s only once you have created an account, entered your beta key, downloaded the client, installed, waited until September 15^th, tried to run it, gotten an unhelpful error, and gone to the Vindictus forums that you’ll find the storm of nerdrage about the territory restrictions and the sticky post with the innocuous title “Vindictus Service Region” which reads:

Greetings players,

Please be aware that Vindictus is currently available in US and Canada ONLY. We have no information regarding expansion plans into other territories such as Oceania at this time. However, if we do have additional information, we will be sure to provide it here.

Thanks,

Neural

Look, I’m not angry that Oceanic players like myself don’t have access to the beta. That’s the sort of thing which always happens when you’re dealing with foreign games being run under license. But come on, did it really not occur to anyone that it would be a good idea to put a big bold warning everywhere so there could be no confusion about who had access?