EA petrol stunt stopped by police

Posted on 8 Sep 2008 at 17:29

London drivers were treated to free fuel on Friday, courtesy of games publisher Electronic Arts. The company offered £40 of free fuel to each driver at a Finsbury Park petrol station until police stopped the stunt because of traffic chaos.

The company held the publicity stunt to promote its new release Mercenaries 2: World in Flames; a third person shooter game set in Venezuela. The act was EA's attempt to reconstruct Venezuelan-style fuel riots on London's streets. The petrol question was decorated as a military bunker; dressed up with jeeps, oil barrels and sandbags.

EA began giving out the free petrol at 6.30am on a first-come, first-served basis, but were stopped by police at around 11.00am. The company still managed to shift £12,000 of the £20,000 worth of fuel they had planned to give away that morning.

"EA approached me to promote their video game and paid 50 per cent in advance. It was a very busy day and police had to stop it," explained the petrol station's manager Harjit Patel.

Some residents were unhappy about the noise and the pile-up of cars in what is normally a quiet residential street.

"I got 40 quid of petrol out of it in the end but I was quite annoyed because I work from home, I could just hear a lot of shouting and screaming going on," said Karen Whiteread, a photographer who lives next to the garage.

Mercenaries 2 has already been attacked by some supporters of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who condemn the title as a ploy by the US to incite "psychological terror" on the South American country.

Author: Dawinderpal Sahota

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