Bethesda Softworks and Bethesda Game Studios are trying really hard to flip the lids of gamers before the year 2018 ends. Yes, yet another controversial stunt has been pulled by the devs along with Silver Screen Bottling regarding the scam that is “Nuka Dark Rum” shipping in a snake oil salesman-like way.
For those of you unaware of the current situation going on that is the “Nuka Dark Rum” debacle will learn the ends and outs right here. Firstly, Nuka Dark Rum is a piece of merchandise that contains dark rum in a Nuka-Cola bottle produced by Silver Screen Bottling as seen on nukadarkrum.com.
Nuka Cola company’s first foray into the alcoholic beverage market is no soft drink and boasts tropical rum taste with notes of molasses, vanilla and a touch of coconut — said to be complemented straight, on the rocks or mixed with Ice-Cold Nuka Cola.
Gamers or collectors foolish enough to pre-order said product on September 5th, 2018, for $79.99 would supposedly obtain the Nuka Dark Rum on the same day as Fallout 76 — November 16th, 2018.
But the drink is not shipping for some purchasers, though. November 21st was the drink’s second due date, which moved to December 5th. The previously named date moved yet again to an unannounced date as noted in the November 21st email stating that “one of the components was not up to Fallout standards” as seen below:
On December 5th, 2018, another email hit purchasers telling them that the Nuka Dark Rum will start shipping on December 12th accompanied by this heavily downvoted video (2.3k downvotes) that contains sad meme music:
https://youtu.be/k_0bVFhzq6g
However, a few people have been receiving the Nuka Dark Rum as of the past few days. YouTuber Alex Zamora published a video on December 22nd, 2018, stating that the drink isn’t a “bad tasting liqueur” but it’s “nothing special.” The video also reveals that the bottle is a cheap plastic one covering a standard beer bottle:
After news broke out regarding yet another controversial act that Bethesda pulled along with Silver Screen Bottling, folks took to r/Fallout to address said situation like Regulartoast:
“I’ll start off with a photo of the “bottle” in question
I saw a post about this the other day, but I wanted to bring it back up for more visibility.
An email was sent out to anyone that purchased the Nuka Dark Rum declaring that the bottling company had finalized the packaging and production and was preparing to ship.
Included in the email is a video of the final bottle. It’s just a regular rum bottle with a plastic Nuka Cola bottle sheath around it. I didn’t expect the rum itself to be any different – I think the idea that they’d have some kind of uniquely flavored rum for a game is pretty outlandish. What I did expect, though, is to have a cool display piece. This isn’t that. This is a pretty obvious minimal effort/expense product designed to trick suckers like me into spending money. None of the marketing material for this product suggested that the Nuka Cola shaped bottle was, in fact, a plastic container. I was, and I suspect I’m not alone in this, under the impression the Nuka Cola bottle was the actual bottle. Which is why I purchased it.
As if the game being unfinished and the canvas bag debacle weren’t disappointment enough, now we’ve got this too.
I’m really disillusioned, and I absolutely intend to do whatever I can to get a refund. I do highly recommend anyone else who feels the same make the effort to get their money back as well.”
Following the above-disgruntled stance comes that of user TheCuriousTeddy, who notes:
“This is the fallout scandal I’m not seeing anyone talk about. If you aren’t familiar with Nuka-Dark, it’s the alcoholic version of Nuka-Cola. Around the time they announced 76, they also announced they’d be producing a real life version of Nuka-Dark in partnership with Silver Screen Bottling company. Awesome right? Who hasn’t wanted a taste of the wasteland in real life? All said and done it was a little under $100 to pre-order. Rather steep for a bottle of rum, but it’s a collector’s item I guess so that’s what you get. At that price I would have expected a nice glass nuka cola shaped bottle and honestly that’s what I was willing to pay the premium for. Turns out that its not even going to be in a nuka shaped bottle, a plain bottle will be wrapped in a PLASTIC nuka shaped cover. Let’s be real, if i wanted a shitty 3D printed nuka bottle I would’ve turned to etsy. That’s not all. The original ship date was the game’s release date, but here we are almost at Christmas and the product HASN’T EVEN SHIPPED TO THE DISTRIBUTORS!!! Hope no one bought it as a Christmas present. Very little communication has been made regarding the product and what has been sent is extremely vague. Just another PR nightmare for Bethesda.”
If you want to hear more about this situation that’s still ongoing due to the Nuka Dark Rum not meeting Fallout standards, you can take a peek at YouTuber SidAlpha‘s video below.
