I think you might be forgetting that only a tiny fraction of people even want to buy the super-rare Inquisitor's Edition at $170 - and that there's a Deluxe Edition as well as a Standard Edition that are available in many if not most places.
How can this "cause serious damage to Bioware's already fragile reputation"? By definition the people who care about, or will miss out on, the limited edition are a tiny proportion of their customers. A tiny proportion of their customers who are already invested in the game, too - otherwise why would they even want to pre-order it before any reviews? If the manufacturing run of the Inquisitor's Edition was as small as they're indicating, then there wouldn't have been enough copies for all the people who wanted it anyway.
I understand that the people affected will be upset - and this is entirely justifiable - but it's hardly helpful to broaden your outrage to include people who in all likelihood could not care less about what the company does with its super-limited editions. This is not the stuff of internet campaigns, petitions and Extended Cuts.
As for why the company agreed to an exclusivity deal with Gamestop - they got paid for it. The income from the deal must be more than they'd be losing by not offering it somewhere else, or else there's a reciprocal marketing arrangement with DA:I being promoted in-store.
If it didn't make business sense, they wouldn't be doing it this way.
While it may be "a tiny fraction of people" affected by not being able to purchase a special, limited edition of a game due to the selected distribution company not selling certain copies in certain countries, that's still a number of people who may very well choose to never purchase another BioWare game again. Then that "tiny fraction of people" start telling their gaming family and friends about their negative experience in trying to purchase a BioWare game, and so on and so on. *shrug* I suspect that there are more people aware of this issue than just "a tiny fraction of people" who are unable to purchase a specific version because the selected world-wide distributor isn't actually able to deliver world-wide! One thing I learnt a long time ago, while there may be a small number people posting about things like this on forums there's usually a lot more who won't bother simply because they've already lost interest and moved on to whatever other new game is fast approaching.
It may well be that this is down to decisions made by someone at EA but what people see is that this is a BioWare game therefore it's BioWare that takes the blame when things go wrong, no matter what it is that goes wrong! Sadly BioWare is no longer a company, it's now just a name that's owned by EA and EA just want to get as much out of their investment as they can while they can. When all is said and done I know there's no-one at either BioWare or EA who will care one way or another about such decisions resulting in the loss of a small number of fans.
Just to be clear, I have absolutely no interest in creating a "internet campaigns, petitions" or anything else, I'm just one person expressing how I feel about this poor marketing decision that is negatively affecting some people.
As it stands currently, no-one in the UK can purchase the retail edition of either the Deluxe or Collector's Editions, and it's not just the players in the UK who have that problem. Breaking news here folks: Not everyone wants to buy a digital version of a game! So please stop telling people that if they can't purchase a retail copy they can still purchase a digital version!
Guest_Fandango_*
Retour en haut
I can't afford the box with all the goodies, but I'd like to at least have the digital bonuses (like the Hart and the "unicorn") But I don't like GameStop. 
![=]](https://lvlt.forum.bioware.com/public/style_emoticons/default/sideways.png)
. Now I know is just the Amazon in my country that is probably late. =_='''
I can only hope, or resygn myself and buy it from GameStop (thing I hate) 
