"We Sincerely Regret This Choice"

Perhaps realising that a mutilated, dismembered and staggeringly busty torso might not have been the best idea for a collector's edition statue, Deep Silver have apologised for the internet-wide offence caused by Dead Island: Riptide's controversial Zombie Bait Edition.

It took scant hours for the Zombie Bait collectible to attract massive outrage from all corners of the gaming community, with many pundits and readers slamming the statue as sexist, disgusting and horrendously creepy at best (though plenty of people didn't really care either way, in fairness). This was doubtlessly Deep Silver's intention, but the scale of the backlash via email, twitter and forums has forced the publisher to issue a surprisingly comprehensive apology.

"We deeply apologize for any offense caused by the Dead Island Riptide “Zombie Bait Edition”, the collector’s edition announced for Europe and Australia," reads a statement from Deep Silver UK, issued via Twitlonger. "Like many gaming companies, Deep Silver has many offices in different countries, which is why sometimes different versions of Collector’s Editions come into being for North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia."

"For the limited run of the Zombie Bait Edition for Europe and Australia, a decision was made to include a gruesome statue of a zombie torso, which was cut up like many of our fans had done to the undead enemies in the original Dead Island."

"We sincerely regret this choice. We are collecting feedback continuously from the Dead Island community, as well as the international gaming community at large, for ongoing internal meetings with Deep Silver's entire international team today. 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."

Are people over-reacting to the controversial statue? Is it one step too far? Is this apology basically just another advert? Let us know what you make of it.