I guess I want to start by talking about unhealthy body standards in young male Venoms, or how nobody should feel ashamed for meeting their own needs, no matter how many inches of Venom it takes. But instead, maybe it’d be best to talk about PlayStation UK’s recent Spider-Man 2 Twitter activity, and the way that they’ve kind of, um – they did a bad job. Like, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but they just… Here, take a look for yourself.
The very real thing of it is, you’d think that most decisions at a corporate level — even small ones, like what gets posted to social media — would go through sort of a vetting process, right? Spider-Man 2 is a triple-A game, with all the clout and pedigree you could ask for in a sequel demanding nine-figure development costs. Even as a PlayStation exclusive, it has the potential to smash the release numbers of 2023’s other high-profile games. It’s an ambitious follow-up to a beloved take on a ubiquitous franchise. The stakes are high. It would be hard to exaggerate how high they are.
And speaking of exaggerating, wow. 19 inches.
There are a lot of questions left to ask about why this happened the way that it happened – why Sony et al felt the need to focus in on the exact height of their Collector’s Edition bonus statue in the first place, and why PlayStation UK didn’t convert that measurement into centimeters like the metric-loving nerds that they are. More than that, it feels worth wondering how, just how, just why, just… what? How did this happen? And who looks at that much Venom and goes “I think I’ll treat myself to…”
Sorry, we can be adults about this.
Spider-Man 2 comes out Oct. 20, 2023.