A purely hypothetical scenario. I announce that I’m writing a new feature on RPS and, if you so desire, you can buy a physical edition of the post. Naturally, it will be printed on a bloodied replica of a woman’s trunk, limbs lopped away, but bikini and breasts thankfully intact. I say ‘naturally’ because the story is about a game with zombies in it and I say ‘thankfully’ because the chest is more important than the zombies. Discerning readers can pop the disfigurement on their mantle. If the notion disappoints or offends people I’ll apologise, but I won’t change my ways because I certainly don’t want all of these torsos sitting in my basement. People might get the wrong idea! So, please buy my bloodied figurines and their contents. NINETY POUNDS IS ALL I ASK!

This was the line that Deep Silver attached their zombie bait to in January: “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.”

I guess what they meant was something along the lines of: “It’ll never happen again but it will still happen three months from now because that’s not really again as such because it hasn’t actually happened yet.” There’s a lesson here. If you plan to do something that may offend and alienate people, why not let them know in advance? That way you can use their reaction to bring more attention to yourself before the act, apologise and then change absolutely nothing. This is how a toddler might behave while bawling about the state of porridge or pajamas, except the little tyke wouldn’t waste any time on an apparently empty apology. What I’m saying is that an infant throwing a tantrum is, in comparison, a model of efficiency.

As far as I can see (and I’m not inclined to look very far) the Zombie Bait edition is always packaged with the 360 version of the game, so perhaps it isn’t strictly relevant to my interests. But we did say we’d keep you posted and I’m always interested when people find new definitions for words like ‘sorry’, ‘committed’, ‘never’ and ‘again’.

Thanks to Bargain Master Lewie P for spotting this.