Gaming Heads has shared a letter that explains how Sony has ordered the company, a popular statue and collectibles maker, to destroy all of its PlayStation-branded merchandise, including those belonging to The Last of Us Part II, God of War, and Bloodborne franchises. According to the letter, the decision affects not only in-stock items, but also items in development and even those that have already been paid for but not shipped out to customers yet. Gaming Heads says that Sony told the company that its products are no longer business priorities.
Open Letter to the PlayStation Collecting Community
On this The Last of Us Day, we regret to inform you and the SONY PlayStation collecting community that SONY has told us to destroy all of our SONY PlayStation merchandise, including in-stock items (e.g. The Last of Us Part II: Ellie statues, Jak 3 statues, God of War statues / busts etc.), items ready to ship to you (i.e. the Sly Cooper (Classic edition) statue), items in production (i.e. The Last of Us: Ellie & Joel diorama) and items in development and ready to launch (e.g. Bloodborne and Ratchet & Clank statues). Yes, this also includes destroying items you have paid for and are waiting to ship to you.
All of our other items (i.e. all non SONY PlayStation items) are fine and are not affected by SONY PlayStation’s decision.
We have worked with SONY PlayStation for more than 10 years to bring you some of the best video game collectibles and have been trying hard to get them to change their mind. They know you have paid your hard-earned money for items that are ready to ship to you or that are in production but unfortunately, after doing all that we can, they have told us not to ship your orders to you – “our business priorities remain unchanged” (a recent direct quote from SONY).
Yes, this is SONY PlayStation’s decision, not ours.
Yes, we want to ship your Jak 3, TLOU2 Ellie, TLOU Ellie & Joel, Sly Cooper and Kratos statues/bust to you but SONY PlayStation does not allow it.
Yes, SONY PlayStation has already received royalty payments from you on your orders that SONY PlayStation now wants us to destroy and not ship to you.
We sincerely apologize if you find yourself in this completely avoidable situation, but please contact Judy Ward (Commercial Partnerships I Sony Interactive Entertainment) at Judy.Ward@sony.com about your (now cancelled) order, payments, refunds etc. and what they will do for you. This is the team at SONY PlayStation that requires the destruction of the items you have ordered, paid for and on which SONY PlayStation has already received royalties from you but will now not allow us to ship your orders to you.
Together we made it through Covid lockdowns, factory closures (it effected production of the Sly Cooper statue, the Kratos (Norse) bust and caused countless delays with other statues), and many other challenges but it seems that you cannot change a decision of SONY PlayStation even if the decision may hurt the SONY PlayStation collecting community.
We remember SONY PlayStation’s old tagline that they are ‘for the Players’ … but given their recent decision that they know adversely affects those in the collecting community willing to spend more on SONY PlayStation merchandise than an actual console, we are now not so sure.
We again sincerely apologize for this extremely disappointing situation but continue to work with our other licensing partners to bring the best video game collectibles to you and to the rest of the collecting community.
Thank you for your continued support.
Open letter to the SONY PlayStation collecting community@GamingHeads @Naughty_Dog @SonySantaMonica @SuckerPunchProd @PlayStation @fromsoftware_pr @insomniacgames
— Gaming Heads (@GamingHeads) September 26, 2023
#thelastofus2 #TheLastOfUs #thelastofuspart2 #RatchetAndClank #slycooper #jakanddaxter #jak3 #GodofWar #Bloodborne pic.twitter.com/c9u1NaW2Xy
Discussion (5 replies)
Join Discussion →The only weird thing is the paid for, but unshipped aspect.
Seems very strange, I hope there is more to the story, for SONY's sake.
Will this affect other collectible manufacturers, or are they only cutting ties with this one due to quality or other issues?
Something doesn't add up to me, this doesn't seem like professional business behavior. IE. basically doxxing their sony rep and telling customers to ask for refunds there. The only right move in this case would've been to refund any outstanding orders and then sue sony to pay for your losses and refund any royalties already paid on unshipped items.
As a recent entry to the collectible hobby myself I know I'd be furious if someone cancelled my outstanding paid for pre-orders. But to not even offer compensation is outright criminal. Collectibles are very expensive.
I intimately know the feeling because I've had a bunch of open pre-orders with a collectible store, that I've been waiting patiently for over a year. Only for them to announce out of the blue that they were acquired by another company and basically going out of business, with the new owner taking over their store and stock. After I learned about this I contacted the new management who told me that their predecessors left a mess and they were going through hundreds of unfulfilled but paid for orders and that they'll get back to me about mine in one or two months.
They did get back to me not even that much later than promised, but with bad news: The previous staff failed to order in my collectibles and now they were all sold out both at the manufacturer and distributor level. So I not just missed out on a bunch of cool stuff, but was still out of pocket at this point for about €700. Told ya, collectibles ain't cheap. And I'm into collecting the cheap-ish stuff, because the expensive collectibles start from €1000 and can get up to the moon for 1:1 statues and such.
But to cut the story short, they offered me store credit, which I respectfully declined because I did not want any random collectibles I wanted those specific items I ordered. And this was also during the period of runaway inflation, so when I paid that €700 it was buying much more than when they offered the credit. So finally they agreed to refund me, which still meant eating the losses due to inflation but at this point I think I got the best possible outcome.
Sony has a long history of being dicks and overly protective about all things Playstation.
Remember how they sued that company that made custom replacement covers for the PS5 into oblivion?
They should be ashamed of themselves.
Yeah, but this is not like that. This is an authorized collectible maker that was fully licensed by SONY and paid royalties to SONY after each of their sales, including the ones they are now ordered to destroy.