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Collector’s editions of games can run to some hefty prices. An ultimate edition of Stalker 2 will set you back more than £300 on Amazon, while collector’s editions of Baldur’s Gate 3 have sold for more than a grand on eBay, though, admittedly, those are in very limited supply.
None of these come close to the ‘My Apocalypse Edition of 2015’s Dying Light, however. Originally promoted around the launch of Techland’s zombie survival game, the My Apocalypse Edition was priced at a whopping £250,000, or $386,000 American greenbacks. For this colossal sum, the My Apocalypse Edition purportedly included the following:
- Four signed steelbook copies of Dying Light (Xbox One version
- 2 sets of Razer Tiamat headphones (for your two heads)
- Branded Night vision goggles
- A “human sized” figure of one of the game’s ‘Volatile’ enemies.
- “Zombie survival” parkour lessons with the Ampisound parkour free running team.
- A photo of your face “skinned” onto your night hunter character.
- A round trip to Techland, where you’d get to “Party with Steve the zombie consultant an dominate our devs in a rigged ‘Be the Zombie’ Match so you can brag to your friends.”
- A custom-built zombie survival shelter provided by Tiger Log Cabins
- Some “adult diapers” to go with your night vision goggles “For Dying Light’s night time gameplay”.
It’s quite the package, although a few of those goodies, like the diapers, the zombie trip, and, y’know, the whole ass cabin, smell a bit fishy. In any case, the edition caused a minor media stir at the time, but otherwise, it came and went. In doing so, it left one unanswered question: Did anyone actually buy it?
Well, this was recently answered by Techland’s PR manager, Paulina Dziedziak. Responding to an enquiry from Insider Gaming, Dziedziak explained that the My Apocalypse edition “Was a PR stunt and got a lot of media attention for its wild and over-the-top nature.” She went on to state that “It did a great job of getting the game noticed” but that “Nobody purchased it—thankfully, I guess!”
It’s probably just as well that nobody tried to buy the My Apocalypse Edition. I did a (very cursory) totting up of what the edition supposedly offered, and for a quarter of a mil, you wouldn’t be getting close to your money’s worth. You can get a pair of night vision goggles for less than £200 on Amazon, though you can pay as much as £10k for them elsewhere, which is still only 4% of the My Apocalypse Edition’s overall cost. Anyway, let’s split the difference and say Techland dropped £5k on a rock-solid set of NVGs. Four Steelbook copies of the game will cost you £2-300, though Techland would presumably have ready access to these anyway. I couldn’t find the RRP for Razer’s Tiamat headphones, but they sell for £100 second hand on eBay, so let’s say £250 apiece for those, totalling £500.
Life size zombie statues range between a few hundred quid and a couple of thousand online, depending on what you’re buying. But this is a custom job, so let’s be generous and say it costs £5k for a really top-notch model. Skinning your face onto a zombie costs only the developer’s time, so let’s put aside £500 for a day’s work for a 3D modeller. According to lastminute.com, a three-night stay in Warsaw, where Techland has offices, costs £546 to stay at the Radisson flying from London. But putting aside the fact you may be flying from elsewhere, we should also factor in the costs of the party, the zombie survival adventure, and the fact that Techland would presumably want to splash out on you a bit, so let’s say they’ve budgeted £10k for this whole affair.
Ampisound doesn’t mention parkour lessons on its website, but parkour lessons in the UK can range anywhere between £15 and £50 per lesson. Given Ampisound is a notable parkour organisation, let’s double it and estimate Techland would book you in for a week’s courses, amounting to £700. Finally, there’s the custom zombie shelter. On Tiger’s website, the most expensive log cabin they have is the ‘Omega’, which costs £10k. But since this is a custom job, again, let’s double the price to £20k.
Oh, I forgot the adult nappies. After a very reluctant Google, a pack of these ranges between £10 and £30 in the UK, so let’s go with the premium tier, as I assume Techland would want you to be comfortable while wearing them.
All of this comes to a total of £42,030, or $53,280, which is some way short of £250,000/$380,000. I can’t help but wonder what Techland would have done if somebody had tried to buy it. Presumably, they would have just come clean. On the other hand, that’s quite the profit margin.
Even without someone dropping a quarter of a million on all this nonsense, Dying Light was a huge success for Techland. Between the original and its sequel, the series sold 30 million copies. Techland is currently working on a third standalone game called Dying Light: The Beast, though it’s still releasing DLC for the original game, a testament to its lasting appeal.
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Kurt Indovina
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