A PC parts company is dumping golden tickets across the UK from space in a bizarre competition to celebrate Starfield

A gaming PC hovers in space, surrounded by falling golden tickets. — (Image credit: CCL Computers)

Look, I'm not one to stifle creativity, but someone probably needs to restrain the world's marketing departments until we figure out what's going on. As spotted by PCGamesN, CCL Computers—a UK PC parts company—has ginned up the most baffling Starfield-themed competition yet. It's launched a gaming PC to "the outer edges of the Earth's atmosphere" over the UK to celebrate the launch of Bethesda's long-awaited space epic, and then used it to dump a bunch of golden tickets across dear old Albion.

Those tickets, which "contain vouchers for free products" on CCL's store, are expected to land in "the midlands and south of the UK," so I guess those of us up north shouldn't waste time combing the woods this weekend. One of them, the so-called "star prize," will also net you a trip to Bethesda. Not the company, no. Not the place in Maryland either. Instead, this ticket will take you to Bethesda, Wales, which, hey, close enough.

Honestly, except for the fact that the PC is kinda, sorta, almost going to space (which is where Starfield is set, don't you know), I'm not sure what relation Starfield has to the CCL competition. Perhaps the PC parts you can get with your golden ticket vouchers will be Starfield-themed in some way? The description is remarkably absent on detail. It doesn't look like you get a free copy of the game or anything, though.

The golden tickets were released around an hour ago at the time of writing, so check your local hedges and treetops if you happen to reside in the midlands or south of the UK. During CCL's Twitch stream to mark the competition, a company spokesperson assured worried onlookers that the tickets were all biodegradable, and should fade away in around seven days. You've got one week then, space cowboys.

If you don't fancy rooting around in nature over the next few days, you can enter the competition in another, slightly more reasonable way: via a widget on the CCL website. Call me suspicious, but I reckon maybe that widget was the real purpose of this competition all along, and the bizarre 'sending a PC to space' thing was perhaps just a way of garnering attention for it. Well played, CCL, well played.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.