Social marketing gone wrong

The discussion goes on and on and on... will Social marketing kill email marketing? My answer remains unchanged: NO.
The main point according to me is not on costs, on reliability, efficiency,... it's on risk.
Let's take a simple example.
I'm a playstation 3 player and am registered to the Ubisoft newsletter, and an Assassin's creed (one of their latest games) follower on facebook.
Wisely, Ubisoft uses both channels to communicate with their consumers but when it comes to the potential risk when communicating with it's clients, I'm pretty sure the Ubisoft marketing department will tonight agree with me: Social marketing represents a risk that email marketing won't.
A few day's ago, Ubisoft sent out an email to announce that clients that pre-ordered the latest Assassin's creed would receive a Beta test code. When you receive such an email you either take it or leave it. They then made an announcement with the exact same message on their facebook page earlier today (sorry, it's in french). It lead to a mayhem.
 Tens of facebook users started flaming down Ubisoft for making a paid Beta (obviously not making the difference with a Demo version and not understanding that pre-ordering would not make the game more expensive and therefore the Beta being free of charge).
Any way:
Will this incident damage either Ubisoft or the next Assassin's creed reputation or popularity? Maybe not.
Could it have been avoided? Definitely
Would it have happen with an email campaign? Of course not.