Here's the screenshot of the letter from Gaming Heads to the community
Here's the alt-text for it:
OPEN LETTER TO THE SONY 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 | Sony Interactive Entertainment) at [email protected] 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.
THE IP FACTORY 10 LIMITED
26 SEPTEMBER 2023
6 images of Sony IP action figures are shown on the letter, from left to right, top to bottom:
- Jak & Dexter with Jak holding an assault rifle,
- Ellie from The Last of Us 2 holding a machete,
- Ellie and Joel from The Last of Us with Ellie holding a bow
- Sly Cooper holding a hook like weapon
- A bust of bearded Kratos from God of War
- A non-bearded Kratos sitting on a throne
I assume, maybe because Sony wants to sell merchandise on their own? Who knows
Personally, I feel like Sony has been becoming more and more hostile towards their customer base, and greedy. It definitely feels like PS3 era hubris, and probably even worse. With the recent drastic price hike for PS+, and now this, it feels like Jim Ryan wants to fatten his payout by the end of the year.
Edit: Apparently people on reddit are saying that Gaming Heads is a shady / unprofessional company that sometimes take payment without shipping the products. So maybe there's a good reason for it?
Having trouble giving Sony the benefit of the doubt these days, but this move just seems odd. I imagine destroying unsold merchandise is fairly common when an agreement ends, but merchandise that was sold, but not shipped? From the letter, it seems like their agreement with Sony was suddenly terminated, which usually doesn't happen without cause. If it was just a normal case of the license expiring you would think Gaming Heads would be aware of that in advance. Also, sending disgruntled customers after a Sony employee who may or may not have signed off on the decision doesn't look like a good move. Definitely curious to see if more comes out about this.