Something shitty’s going on here and I feel bad for this kid, Nathaniel. According to Hawty McBloggy (sweet name, by the way), here’s what happened…
UPDATE: Aww, see THIS is what’s great about people on the internet. According to an article published today on Next-Gen,
“Something is already ‘afoot’ within Bungie to help our community member in need,” Bungie community director Brian Jarrard told Next-Gen on Monday. “Our team and the community as a whole is rallying to help fix this unfortunate situation. It’s been awesome to see such an outpouring of sympathy and support from our community. We can’t replace the exact item that was lost but, but we should come very close.”
Very cool. Nice work everybody. Here’s the rest of the original story now.
Nathaniel’s Xbox 360 was his trusty traveling companion. Throughout their joint adventures, Nathaniel acquired several signatures from notable members of the gaming community, all collected directly upon his console with permanent marker. Signatures from several members of the Rooster Teeth Productions staff shared space with signatures from members of the Xbox 360 team and also staff from Bungie Studios. He even had custom artwork by Rooster Teeth Comics artist and Halo fan artist Luke McKay on it.
So this kid has a bunch of signatures and the cool Master Chief drawing on his Xbox 360 and he has to send it in for repairs. He includes a long, long letter with the console that explains the significance of all the signatures and the drawing and basically says to please, oh please not let anything happen to the case.
He also calls and speaks with someone, who assures him that he’ll receive his original case back, signatures and drawing intact. Instead, he gets the console fixed and returned to him — same serial number, mind you — but the case has been wiped clean except for a few slight smudges left behind, as seen below.
All of the writing on the case was in permanent marker and wouldn’t easily be rubbed off without a fair amount of elbow grease. So what happened here? I present you with some possibilities.
1. The tech that worked on the box was an asshole and wiped everything off for no good reason other than to continue in his quest to be an asshole.
2. The tech that worked on the box wanted it for himself, so he replaced it with a clean one and made a couple smudge marks to make it appear as though it’d been cleaned.
3. The tech that worked on the box didn’t speak English and mistook “Don’t clean the case” with “Definitely clean the case. Clean it like it’s never been cleaned before, as if your very life depended on this case being cleaned spotlessly. Leave a couple smudges, though.”
4. The story is some sort of scam, hoax, traffic-driver, or something to that effect. However, the author of the post states, “I would not have carried this story if it didn’t come from an extremely reputable source. An upstanding member of the community that is a personal friend of mine asked if I would do the article. He is someone that knows Nathaniel, and also is one of the signatures on the case.”
At any case, the idea that this is some sort of simple mistake defies all logic. Something’s going on here and it’s doubtful that it’ll ever be fully explained. Microsoft is currently “looking into the issue and working to correct the situation.”
Another Gamer Screwed by Microsoft [Hawty McBloggy] via Next Gen