the grunter

Before the winter holidays of 2010, EA Canada distributed a special production of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, the game with the highest metascore according to Metacritics among all the EA 2010 titles. This edition is not for personal orders by employees or available at the company store, one copy is reserved under the name of each full time EA employee, that was it.

It’s called the “EA crew edition” and it contains 7 extra cars compared to the standard editions. In addition, it has special packaging that both expresses the company’s gratitude to its employees for a wonderful product and wishes a happy holiday to them.

I did not unwrap mine, but according to wecollectgames.com (more photos inside) this is what’s inside the EA crew edition:

The game comes in a simple fold-out paper sleeve with a unique cover; it shows only the Hot Pursuit caption and the name of the edition. After unfolding the sleeve you can see a short greeting by EA CEO, John Riccitiello. The game itself comes in normal DVD case with an exclusive cover. The disc inside the box is custom printed as well and it contains the game code and 7 exclusive cars as an extra.

So why did I write about this nearly a month after the winter holidays? It is because I just got a hold of a copy today. Apparently since I am under the payroll of the contractor agency that assigned me to EA, technically I am not a full time EA employee. You can imagine how much I wanted a copy last year when everyone was lining up to redeem their copy (My boss generously offered to sell his copy to me for a small price of $600, I said “No thanks” and assured him that I wouldn’t report him to HR about trying to sell a “Not For Resale” item).

A little story time here: From talking to a colleague I learned that while no one was willing to part ways with their copy (I just searched for it on ebay and did not find any), there was one person from the Fight Night Champion team that *might* consider putting his copy out, if the deal is right. I happened to be helping out at that team for that week and I actually just met this person, so immediately I sent him an IM asking if the rumors were true. He replied, asking me to make an offer. Before I blindly tried to evaluate the worth of this internal holiday gift which is both free and priceless, I decided to dig out deeper info from my colleague.

I learned that he likes the Chicago Blackhawks, the NHL team that is having a decent season so far (25W18L). Just so happens, I just won a copy of NHL 2010 (Xbox 360) autographed by Patrick Kane, the star lead scorer of the Blackhawks (add “cover boy of NHL 2010″), in a company silent auction.

I offered, he asked to take a look. Moments later we had a deal.

Oh and, I didn’t actually get the game until today because he kept forgetting to bring it to work :P

Here’s to hope that this holiday season I won’t have to go through all that trouble just to get an employee perk.