As if the whole brouhaha about Mafia 3’s 30fps cap wasn’t enough of a terrible portent, there’s an issue that’s affected many purchasers of the game, including me — one that means we can’t even play the game we paid for. In the physical Deluxe editions, it seems like the majority have not included any Steam keys, making the product a glorified paperweight.
The Amazon page for this version of the game is full of one-star reviews from people who had the same problem, along with one smug asshole who actually did get a code and should probably go buy a lottery ticket. There are multiple threads on the Steam forums about this as well (the second one there featuring a 2K rep sticking his head in, followed by him doing this at the realization of what was happening), as well as Best Buy’s forum and *shudder* reddit. There’s also an anecdotal story floating around that a Gamestop received 25 copies total, and 17 of them were missing inserts.
The cool thing is that retailers won’t take refunds for PC games, and 2K has zero interest in either rectifying this or even admitting that it’s an issue. Amazon and Best Buy have removed the game from sale, but 2K has yet to issue any kind of response to this, opting for complete radio silence instead. When I contacted them to see if there was anything they could do about this, even offering to provide photographic proof that I bought the game, I got this response:
Thank you for contacting 2K support. I’m sorry to hear that you are missing your Key, I know how frustrating it can be when your game doesn’t come complete.
Sadly, as this was a physical copy of the game, you will have to contact your retailer for more information about your key.
We are however trying to gather information, so if you don’t mind, could you provide the following information:
Which retailer did you use to purchase your copy of Mafia III?
Which region of the world do you live in?
A big fat “fuck off,” more or less. So now we’re all stuck here with a bunch of useless discs until somewhere, someone at 2K gets their head out of their ass and sends out some goddamn codes.
[UPDATE: Once this started showing up on news outlets, 2K decided maybe they should actually do something, and are in the process of sending codes. Finally.]