IGN have picked up a story first reported by Reddit users: The Heroes VII Collector's Edition sold in the U.S. (no confirmation as to the status for the rest of North America) contains all the stuff advertised earlier, except the physical DVDs. As Ubisoft have since admitted in their comment, their advertising material has omitted any mention of this missing feature and - indeed - the physical material seems to be made with a DVD release in mind. According to the comment, Ubisoft "are accepting complete refunds from any dissatisfied customers", so that's going to work out OK, except that you won't get the discs, of course. Unless you visit a store and buy them seperately, I guess.

You can read all these stories and even comment in our forum but I'd like to clarify our official view on the matter:

• Yes, it's misrepresentation and we don't like that. All info released thus far has given fans the expectation that the Collector's edition would contain physical DVDs as well as the other stuff. We were really happy to report back in the spring that the edition would be available in the U.S., so this is a bit of a let-down.
• Is it a huge deal? Well, maybe not. For all practical purposes, the discs are all but useless anyway since the day 1-patch is so huge (11Gb), but there's still the matter of what such a special edition is for: it's for owning, coveting and putting in a special place on the shelf. The fact that the discs are missing from this "ensemble" makes it a little bit less special.
• What's really annoying, though, is that this seems so unneccessary. Ubisoft were already making this big box thing with lots of stuff inside it ... was it really so hard to print some DVDs for that box as well? Are Ubisoft unable to produce DVDs? Don't they have that technology in the U.S.? Seriously, for $100 and since you're already making and shipping those big things, chuck in a DVD, eh?