Game Merch Blanket Arrives Missing Buttons, Customer Service Tells Player to Sew Them On Herself — Internet Outraged Over Severe Color Discrepancy

You buy a game merchandise blanket, it arrives missing two buttons — already pretty bad. But here's the real kicker: customer service's fix was to mail you replacement buttons so you can sew them on yourself. Yes, you read that right.

Here's the story: A player posted on NGA's gossip board about their experience purchasing official merchandise for Reverse: 1999 (commonly known as "1999" in the Chinese gaming community). After waiting ages for the blanket to finally arrive, they excitedly unboxed it — only to find it couldn't be fastened at all, unlike the official promo photos.

Here's the official product promo image:

After discussing with other players in the 1999 forum section, it was confirmed: the blanket was simply missing two snap buttons. One side had them, the other side was completely bare.

Then came the absurd part. When the player contacted customer service about the defect, the proposed solution was — wait for it — to send replacement buttons and have the player sew them on by themselves. That's right: you receive a defective product, and the after-sale solution is to hand you the tools and tell you to DIY the fix.

Fortunately, the player pushed back and eventually got customer service to agree to a return and refund. But the whole experience left them lamenting: buying game merch just once and running into this kind of fiasco — it really feels like these companies don't treat gacha game players as real customers.

The poster also noted that the actual product color was a much darker blue than the bright blue shown in the promotional images — a point that became a major topic in the comments section.

Once the post went up, the comment section exploded. The community's fury centered on two main issues:

First, the ridiculous color difference. Tons of commenters pointed out the massive gap between the promo image and the actual product: "The buyer's show vs. seller's show color gap is insane," "Isn't this color difference a bit too much?" "The color makes it look ten times cheaper." Some even suspected filters were heavily applied to the promo shots. While the poster attributed it to phone camera filters, the community wasn't buying it.

Second, the jaw-dropping after-sales response. One commenter nailed the community sentiment with: "1999 just further proved the value of '2/3 Zhou' (two-thirds of Arknights)." This is insider slang suggesting the merchandise quality is only worth two-thirds of what competitors charge — a not-so-subtle jab at the company cashing in on fans. Others brought up the infamous "Chao Long Shan" (a mocking nickname for a well-known game merch company infamous for quality disasters), quipping: "They're learning from Chaolan Mountain's 0.13 ethics — though they still have a long way to go," implying this level of merch failure is practically an industry benchmark.

One commenter even busted out a classic Chinese proverb with a twist: "This is truly a case of 'the water that bears the boat can also capsize it'" — meaning the players who lift up a game can just as easily tear it down over garbage-tier merchandise.

All in all, a blanket with missing buttons managed to unearth the deep-seated frustration gacha game fans have with merchandise quality and customer service attitudes. Whether this particular blanket was a "creative defect" or a "limited edition manufacturing disaster" — well, only the manufacturer knows for sure.