devOPS Update: Armageddon Preorder Issues

During the Armageddon preorder window, we experienced a few technical issues that caused confusion for some customers. Since most of these issues happened during a very high-traffic release, we wanted to provide a quick breakdown from the technical side of things.

Address Errors During Checkout

Some customers saw messages during checkout that made it look like we suddenly could not ship to their address.

That was not actually the case.

From what we can see on our end, the issue appears to have stemmed from Shopify struggling under the server load during the preorder rush. When the available inventory was being depleted extremely quickly, the system was effectively trying to process a checkout where there was no longer a valid item available to ship.

Computers, being the deeply annoying boxes of wires that they are, do not handle “ship nothing to someone” very gracefully. Instead of giving a clean and helpful message like “this item is now sold out,” some customers were shown address-related errors.

To be clear: we do not believe customer addresses were the issue. The issue appears to have been tied to the speed at which Armageddon boxes sold out due to the limited allocation we received from Games Workshop.

We have opened an investigation with Shopify to confirm exactly what happened. At the moment, that investigation has not moved much further, but we are continuing to monitor it and will push for more clarity where possible.

Gift Card Glitch

Some customers also received erroneous gift cards after purchasing Armageddon.

These gift cards had no actual value and appear to have been some kind of glitch or leftover trigger from the store sale that ran during the week leading up to the preorder.

From what we can see, the sales team did not advertise any Armageddon gift card promotion, and there was no active promotion offering gift cards with Armageddon purchases.

Once the issue was identified, those gift cards were deactivated shortly after creation.

A small number of customers were also incorrectly billed for gift cards. Based on our most recent check with the sales team, those charges were refunded.

Current Status

At this point, all known errors have been cleared up on our end.

That said, we are continuing to monitor the situation, especially around checkout behavior during major preorder releases. High-demand launches like Armageddon put a lot of stress on every part of the system, from inventory allocation to checkout processing, and we are reviewing what can be improved before the next major release.