Free Dark Souls from Golden Joystick[Ended] Codes are being emailed!

True, but throwing things around like boycotting them, trashing them, etc. when they were previously a paying customer is counter to the purpose of the promotion. If running the promotion is going to cost them future sales, they are unlikely to repeat the promotions is all I meant. It was while supplies last and people exploited it. Things get exploited, it isn't really GJ's fault. They tried to put the security in place (Tax error code if your IP was not in UK/EU) to limit it to the target group. VPN's defeated it. It's hard to counter VPNs and peoples willingness to commit fraud (using fake address information, etc.) to get freebies. GJ is a victim of fraud as much as any other EU/UK person who legitimately had a claim to the promotion. They tried to at least make amends by giving out something else instead, but of course, that isn't nearly as good of an item as people were expecting. It's not exactly bait and switch though, it was an attempt at damage control.

Exactly.

That's debatable in itself. Something similar happened to a Christian soup kitchen (Place where you can get free food/meals if you need it) around Christmas time. They put up flyers at homeless shelters and at the local soup kitchens "No one should be without a good Christmas Dinner, come to [address] for your Christmas dinner". They were targeting just the homeless and those in need only. They had had dinners enough for over 2000 people, when typical soup kitchen turnout is <1000 per day. They anticipated having leftovers that they could use to make sandwiches and soup for the next day. When the day came, they had line ups that far exceeded their expectations because people who were not homeless, including people who were very well off, showed up for their free meal. Their general creed is no one in need will be turned away. They ran out of food long before it was over so many homeless people or people in actual need (could not afford it themselves), who likely were really looking forward to their Christmas dinner went without or just scraps. Are you trying to tell me that Soup Kitchen should not have attempted to make a nice meal for the people to give them some happiness in a lonely time? Just ran it business as usual? Had they not made the attempt, those people would not have went hungry because none of the others would have shown up. They tried to do something nice, it backfired due to greed. It's pretty much the same for GJ. They tried to be nice to their EU/UK client base and people who did not qualify swarmed in and ate all the turkey!

I do remember, but those were not limited to a select geo-location. They likely had far more keys on hand. They just underestimated the demand for an almost 5 year old game. They shut the promotion down as soon as they realized there was a problem. It only lasted half a day at most once word got around and it likely wouldn't even have lasted that long had it not been the middle of the night there when it happened.
I'm just as disappointed as the rest that I didn't get the game I was looking forward to getting for a week, just I at least had the luxury of expecting that I would not get it.

Yes but they had the option where you can untick promotional emails sent by them, which means you won't receive spam. They did make a few mistakes such as allowing VPN bypassing the restrictions and not stating the limited number of keys.