The first MTG Arena Direct contests, where players could claim boxes of physical Magic: The Gathering cards by winning digital matches, has gone somewhat awry, as Wizards of the Coast admits it’s run out of stock.
The contests, which took place on June 28 and July 12, cost 5,000 gems (about $30) per entry, and saw players striving to string together six wins in Sealed Modern Horizons 3 matches. The grand prize was a Modern Horizons 3 play booster box, delivered to your door. Since Wizards of the Coast has done away with RRP, we can’t say exactly what that’s worth, but they’re selling on Amazon for about $235 – $250.
Some players have publicly posted communication with Wizards of the Coast that shows it’s giving out $250 in cash in place of the missing boxes. When the contest was announced, Wizards did say it might have to do this – although it did call running out of inventory “an unlikely event”.
One winner, Twitter user Holzi complained that Wizards had confirmed they would be receiving the boxes a few days before telling them they were out of stock. “This is just ridiculous. It’s not like this is some third party product,” they wrote.
It seems like there may have been issues leading up to the announcement too. Lots of customers have made Reddit threads recently reporting days or weeks without communication and difficulties arranging to receive their prize.
In an interview with Draftsim, David Finseth, Wizards of the Coast’s Senior Manager of Digital Product, explained that the Arena Direct contest had roughly three times the attendance Wizards was expecting (so if you thought paper Magic was dying, you can cheer up). This used up stock and overwhelmed customer service, leading to delays.
While Finseth didn’t go into detail, he did suggest changes would be made before the next competition of this sort, telling Draftsim that future Arena Directs had been delayed until they could build a better system.
From the screenshots players have posted online, it appears some players won multiple Modern Horizons 3 boxes. Perhaps restricting the competition to one entry, or one win per account would make sense? Sounds better than making it harder to win, at any rate.
For more Magic content, check out our guide to the best MTG Arena decks for racking up Standard wins, or try these MTG Arena codes – maybe there are still some you haven’t used!
Source: Wargamer
