AMD Responds to Recent Game Bundle Redemption Issues, Promises Fix (Update)
Update 3/19/19: AMD updated the community via a tweet from its official account and a posting on the R/AMD subreddit:
We would like to provide an update to our community on our AMD Rewards offer for Tom Clancy's The Division 2, Devil May Cry 5, and Resident Evil 2. First, we apologize for the delay in getting games out to all validated participants. We saw strong demand for the program that caused delays with our processing systems.For Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, as of Monday March 18th we have assigned games to all validated orders and everyone should have received notification via email yesterday. For Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5, we will begin distributing game keys mid-week and expect to complete the distribution by the end of this week for all validated orders.If you have not received your game key by the end of the week, please contact AMD Rewards Support at www.AMDRewards.com/Support. If you have already submitted a ticket, please do not submit another ticket; your ticket is in the queue and we will be in contact soon. Again, we apologize for the delay and we hope you enjoy playing The Division 2, Devil May Cry 5, and Resident Evil 2 on your Radeon graphics and Ryzen processors.
Original Article:
Complaints from AMD customers have been mounting in online forums that they haven't been able to redeem the free games that come with AMD CPU and GPU purchases, including the Division 2, Devil May Cry 5, and Resident Evil 2 HD.
These complaints span as far back as the Resident Evil 2 launch in late January, but with the release of the Division 2 today and the persistence of these issues, users are voicing their opinions louder than before. A thread posted on r/AMD nine days ago now has over 2,500 comments.
User AMD_Mickey, a representative of AMD, has been actively responding to complaints within the thread and has given updates on the situation since March 12. The representative has confirmed issues with all three titles, and he describes the Division 2 title seeing a "wave" of users reporting redemption issues, perhaps because it was released today.
He also explained that the process is automated, but said: "There are situations where we sometimes need to manually review proof of purchase and find they are not legitimate or fraudulent, but that isn't the cause here." AMD also posted the following statement:
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We sincerely apologize for the delay in getting you access to The Division 2. We encountered a delay due to popularity of the game. We're currently sending an additional wave of The Division 2 to affected customers, and hope to have these games delivered shortly. Please keep an eye on your email for a notification when your game is ready. We are working hard on a resolution for Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5, as we know how excited you are to play. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
These complaints largely center on AMD's perceived lack of action in solving the issue that has intensified within the past week, but have existed for longer. An r/AMD moderator, who is not an AMD employee, told Tom's Hardware that he has attempted to remove posts asking to buy, sell, or trade game codes. Some moderators also claim to have even been messaged privately by users asking them to redeem game codes, because the process requires the type of product it came with.
In either case, it's likely that many of these complaints are coming from the actual purchasers of AMD CPUs and GPUs, and these people are entitled to games that were promised upon purchase. AMD's representative says this issue will be solved as soon as possible and that AMD will work in the future to ensure such an issue doesn't happen again.
It's not beyond any company to experience technical difficulties and not handle things in the best way possible. But this could also just be a combination of minor issues, like a surge in hardware sales leading to brief periods where AMD is running out of codes, and perhaps some small subset of users trying to redeem codes before Division 2 actually launched.
Of course, whatever the true reason or reasons, this kind of thing isn't great for gamers or AMD. Hopefully for all involved, this is a blip that AMD will sort out over the coming days, so gamers can get back to playing the hot new titles on their Ryzen, Polaris and Vega parts.
We've reached out to AMD for further clarification and will update as necessary.
Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.