Today I received an email from Michael Meyers Public Relations on behalf of Bill Swartz, the CEO of Mastiff Games. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re the company behind gripping triple-A titles such as Remington Super Slam Hunting Africa, Major League Eating: The Game, and Deer Drive DS.

The email starts out friendly enough, expressing a fondness for Japan and empathizing with the people of the country following the tsunami and recent earthquakes. But then Bill goes on to say this:

I hope that you will join Mastiff and me personally in helping Japan’s recovery. In addition to the funds that Mastiff and I are personally contributing already, Mastiff pledges that for every 100 people who like us on Facebook between now and the end of April, Mastiff will donate $100 to the Red Cross for Japan relief, up to $25,000. The Mastiff Facebook page can be seen at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mastiff/198432740174274

So let me get this straight, Bill - your company has up to $25,000 earmarked for donation to the Red Cross to go directly to aid Japan, but you’re only going to give them the money if a sufficient quantity of people “Like” you on Facebook? Do you not think it’s a little, I don’t know, fucking douchey to try and use a catastrophic natural disaster to selfishly promote your shitty game company?

Did you not see what Bing tried to do on Twitter this weekend? They promised to give $100,000 to aid Japan, but only if people retweeted their poxy promotional tweet telling everybody how fucking brilliant Bing is for giving money to charity. They were rightly given a lot of shit for it and wound up just donating the money in the end - but not before taking a PR hit.

If you’ve got the money set aside for the Red Cross, just fucking give it to them. Promising to only give any it to charity on the proviso that people pay attention to your Facebook page is fucking despicable.