I'd like to say that I'm amazed that GameStop would steal from their customers, but they haven't been the bastions of honesty that I'd like to think they were.
So no, I'm not amazed.
If they were honest, they'd either send the boxes back to the manufacturer and ask for ones that didn't have the codes, or leave them intact. Stealing something out of the box, then wrapping it up like it's new and selling it... That's just dishonest.
That would not be honest at all. Putting in a redeemable game voucher for On-Live was not "accidentally packed" into each game. Square-Enix came to an agreement with On-Live to include On-Live digital copies.
I'm amazed at how Gamestop doesn't even try to lie or spin their way out. They state, "Square Enix packed a competitor’s coupon within the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution without our prior knowledge and we did pull these coupons."
No, initially they would not comment on it, despite the fact that people knew it was going on. It wasn't until they realized the internet had ahold of it like a rabid dog that they decided to talk. At that point, they had no choice but to tell the truth.
Don't give them points for following the only course they had open to them.
Is this even their prerogative? Presumably, Square Enix would have partnered directly with OnLive and made some contractual arrangement to include the promotion in their product packaging. I'm certainly not a lawyer, but I can't imagine this being within GameStop's rights.
Digital distribution is coming, whether GameStop like it or not. Removing the free codes for OnLive is not going to stem the tide.
For proprietary media like Playstation, XBox, etc they're going to be disintermediated whether they like it or not. They still can win in the PC arena.
So rather than acquiring strategically pointless startups like casual gaming site Kongregate, they'd be wise to ramp up their efforts to compete with Steam or even acquire whole digital distribution + consumption stacks like OnLive itself.
Competing with Steam is more a relationship challenge than a technical one, and of all companies GameStop is well placed with those existing relationships.
The downfall of Blockbuster should have proved that they need to change a long time ago.
So rather than acquiring strategically pointless startups like casual gaming site Kongregate, they'd be wise to ramp up their efforts to compete with Steam or even acquire whole digital distribution + consumption stacks like OnLive itself.
Yeah but they've either not picked the right companies or they're simply taking out player to protect their incumbent positon. They're not doing anything with the technology that acquired.
I've not met a gamer who is a raving fan of GameStop. they seem to either hate them, or not hate them yet.
They do have a lot of names and numbers, but you rarely see anything remotely like the "i <3 steam" or "i quit pirating games because steam does it right" abject love that valve gets.
I have serious doubts GameStop's corporate culture can accept gamers as anything other than something to extract dollars from, much less accept lower revenue and lower expenses.
To be honest there are tons of Steam haters (including me). Gamers love the concept of digital distribution but not the way Steam does it. Right now there is no decent competition, there are several companies but most of them are quite weak in many levels.
Possibly future is Steam alike platforms with rent ability (such as gametap / metaboli). Simply put Netflix for games is the next thing, although looks like going to take another 3-5 years to get something decent in that field.
Right now they have 2 problems. Lack of PC rentals (due to obvious reasons) and lack of "instant play", but hey PC gaming is dying anyway and rentals for consoles is possibly just around the corner.
Sure PC gaming is bigger than '96 but what's the growth compared to expected growth?
Consoles obviously took massive amount of the market. PC hardware is still expensive if you want to play the new games, some games don't even bother release PC versions any more. But there's a hardcore gaming community and there are certain types of games that still suck in consoles. Even this is clear indication that PC gaming is dying, or will be a niche rather than a main stream thing.
Even this is clear indication that PC gaming is dying, or will be a niche rather than a main stream thing.
You're arguments are all but copy and pasted from every other person who has brought this up in the last ten years or so. The reasons you stated haven't brought about the end of PC gaming yet.
Oh, I'm sure there's plenty of room for Steam competition.
The point is, I've never met, or even heard of, a GameStop fan. Maybe they can do it, maybe they can be the go to solution for online distribution. I just doubt it. They try a lot harder to get their hand in your wallet than they try to give you a fun gaming experience.
It's hard not to hear about valve promotions from non-valve people(sorry to harp on steam). I've never had that experience with GS, and i think it's because they make people uncomfortable.
my comment's peer's discussion of gamefly is exactly what i mean. high regard for GS just seems ... really really rare.
It's the lack of a trading option. You can't give your games to someone else once you're bored with them. There are also geographic restrictions, the games you bought in the US you may not be able to play in the EU or vice-versa. Technically as well, if your account gets hacked and the hacker gets VAC-banned, there is no recourse, bans are near-impossible to overturn.
All true, but with the exception of the fact that Valve gouges their European clientele, none of that really disturbed me much.
The fact that I don't have to fumble with media to me is so valuable that it balances the disadvantages out.
But all your points are valid and while I probably wouldn't personally make use of a rental option it would sure be nice to have (for example: to evaluate a more expensive game before buying it. Thinking about it; This is probably the very reason why they don't have it, but I digress).
Trading or gifting games would probably be a no-brainer to implement, then again it would be bad for business.
Overall I just haven't found a comparable service that works so well, which probably makes me that relative fan.
That doesn't mean that there's no place for improvements or a better product / service in the future.
I don't see how being able to give away games would be bad for business. I do see how trading could hurt business, but that's a narrow view of things. It might be that the ability to trade attracts more sales than the trading itself costs. I don't know if that is actually the case, but I wouldn't be too hasty to dismiss it, either.
The same goes for renting. Granting people the ability to try out a game before buying it could increase sales. Many of the games I play I don't even come close to finishing. If there were a cheaper (and easier) option to try out a game for an hour than buying the full game in a physical store and then hoping I can trade it off later on, I might very well be interested.
I never quite understood why shareware games went out of favour.
It's not Valve that gouges non-US customers, it's the publishers. Having travelled to the US with a gaming capable laptop I was unable to purchase games via the US Steam store, but instead had to pay a significant amount more (in USD) to buy it from the Australian store. Just as an example now - even though the AUD and USD are hovering around parity - Deus Ex is $90 here, and I'm sure it's around or under $60 in the US.
As for problems with not being able to re-sell or rent games, that's not so much of a problem for me because I don't do that anyway. I would only really need to sell such games when they take up too much physical space, and with Steam and digital delivery it's not an issue.
For me it's the lack of a resale option. With console games I can get them on the day they come out, beat them in a week or two and get half my money back.
This means a AAA title that costs $60.00 actually only costs me $30.00.
I haven't found a way to sell steam games yet:( This means that the same game on steam would have to cost half of what it costs in retail chains to be worth my while.
Now Steam occasionally does have such games due to sales, but it just can't compete with the new releases.
Competing with Steam is more a relationship challenge than a technical one, and of all companies GameStop is well placed with those existing relationships.
I think the PC gaming market's relationship with GameStop can be described as "disgusted." Lots of PC gamers dislike GameStop (rockpapershotgun.com and pcgamer.com and their forums as prime examples of how people feel about them). Exclusive pre-order bonuses, cruddy behavior like this, ect.
GameStop's lack of scruples: not surprising.
GameStop fears OnLive as a substantial threat: a little surprising. Internet speeds for the majority of Americans are just way too slow for OnLive to be viable.
Requirements increasing will only mean they have to upgrade their computers in a data center somewhere, not that the ping between the server and you needs to get faster. The delay is noticeable, but games requiring more processing power will have no effect on the time it takes OnLive to send you data.
Of course, but even that's a nontrivial task. OnLive's game machines target somewhere around "low-middle"; the quality isn't even console-level. They buy machines that are close to the first to be obsoleted by the upgrade march, so there'll always be the "damn, that plays like ass on OnLive" problem for new releases.
When you couple pretty poor quality with persistent, noticeable latency, you do not have a recipe for success.
It'll only take one AAA publisher with a deep marketing budget to sink a couple of million into dedicated OnLive servers for a new title for that problem to go away. Maybe that's what they're banking on.
I'm not so sure. To make an impact it would have to be a very popular IP designed with OnLive's stack in mind coupled with platform exclusivity (at least at launch). The problem I see for OnLive is that their target demographic (gamers who purchase AAA titles) are the consumers who are most critical of performance issues. If OnLive were serving up content to casual gamers, the service's shortcomings would be less of an obstacle, but I just don't see how they're going to get tech-aware consumers to jump on board.
There's another angle, though: while the control round-trip might be hideous on OnLive, the inter-user round-trip is negligible; presumably everyone will be sitting on the same gigabit (or better) LAN. Games currently have to pull all sorts of tricks to make the inter-user latency appear not to be present. They've got good enough that generally you just don't notice. I think the same thing will happen here, although I admit that nobody's demonstrated that they're capable of surmounting the technical challenge, and I doubt it's as simple as tweaking #defines in the network stack.
It's a lot easier for a game to let you shoot at where your client-side prediction thinks the guy is supposed to be than to allow players to react to things that happened before their input for a given time tick was processed.
What you're saying is nontrivial and may not even be workable, because it's impossible to really separate "stupid slow player" from "player whose latency is high enough that he can't react".
> For now, if you absolutely must buy the game from a GameStop location, either make sure the game is sealed, or check for the coupon before leaving the location.
I used to work at one in HS. It's really easy to reseal a package with shrink wrap.
Me too! The heat gun shrink wrap is cool stuff, but it's obviously not the factory-fresh stuff (nicely folded cellophane gift wrap) to anyone who's purchased a new game in the last few years. Plus, there's also a box seal inside the wrap anyways.
It works really well, just check your bandwidth. I spent most of last Saturday playing OnLive and watching Netflix and between them it chewed up 8 gigs of data. I've got a fairly generous cap though so I'm not worried.
Indeed, if you haven't tried it yet then you absolutely should. I highly recommend Just Cause 2, it's a huge game and it plays perfectly. You can play any game for 30 minutes without spending a penny.
YES. I'm actually really sad that I'm unable to invest money in the huge expansion that's happening in the software industry right now. Due to Sarbanes-Oxley, this entire industrial development is completely off-limits to regular Joe investors. It sucks to be aware of this and not be able to do anything about it.
There are many reasons why this is bad, first and foremost that this is where a lot of the action is right now and those of us with less than 10 million available to invest are stuck investing in only the rest of the economy. Which, from what I gather from the news, is pretty mismanaged in the US.
After trying out OnLive for 5 minutes even without playing, it is obvious that this is the future for most gamers.
It's not officially available in the UK yet, but I've managed to get on anyway. Even with the huge distance involved, the latency was still low enough to play Darksiders, which looked pretty impressive on a netbook!
I'll use this story next time I explain net neutrality to anyone. "Think what GameStop is doing is bad? Imagine your ISP engaging in similar practices."
I'm not surprised that this doesn't surprise anyone. So many fall victim to unethical practices from Gamestop, the worst I think being selling used re-shrink-wrapped games as New.
In other news, digital distribution to me makes sense i.e. Steam, and full downloads direct to console HD and the like, but it just isn't a large enough market share yet IMO. These games are humongous it's kind of pain to keep running out of disk space, at least as things stand currently.
I'm a bit confused. When is hard drive space a problem? With digital distribution, you can redownload at whim, and with discs, you can reinstall at (slightly less convenient) whim.
I mean on a console, not a personal computer. We're talking digital distribution of software onto game consoles, with Steam and PC, it's easy. But, with say PSN and Xbox Live, I'm not alone when I say that I have trouble managing space and dealing with download times. I'd rather buy a hard copy of the game.
This is the same company that will buy used games for $2 and sell them for MSRP minus $3 or so, then try to sell "scratch insurance" as an attachment.
I don't play a lot of games, but every time I do pick one up (since GameStop is virtually the only remaining B&M game store in many places), it hasn't been a consumer-friendly experience.
Can Square Enix sue GameStop for trademark infringement or something? Opening trademarked boxes and removing things that the customer is presumably paying for, without notifying the customer, sounds illegal to me. If you did the same with boxes of Legos, what would the result be?
Presumably "Deus Ex" is Square Enix's trademark, no? If GameStop is passing off what's left after they tamper with the box as Deus Ex Whatever, wouldn't that be trademark infringement?
Depends. GameSpot could claim the game itself is Deus Ex. They could pull a hunter off the street and ask what they would define as 'Deus Ex', the punter might say the game.
Twould be different.t if the box said 'Comes with a voucher for D'oeuvres on the box. Though in that case normal consumer rights law about accurate descriptions comes into play and GameSpot are in a very weak position then.
What would be more interesting is if Square Enix and GameSpot have some contract for how to sell these games, and GameSpot are breaking this.
> They could pull a hunter off the street and ask what they would define as 'Deus Ex', the punter might say the game.
I think that traditionally it's the trademark owner who gets to define what their trademark is allowed to be applied to, not a "hunter off the street." (Did you mean "punter"?) This sometimes has deleterious effects — for example, Saran Wrap no longer contains any Saran, and Kaopectate in the US no longer consists of kaolinite and pectin — but by and large it's a sensible policy, in light of the information asymmetry between consumers and producers that makes trademark law a reasonable bargain in the first place.
("Information asymmetry"? I mean, if you knew how to make flawless replacement cylinder heads for your Ferrari, you'd likely make them yourself instead of buying them from Ferrari; and if you knew how to identify flawless cylinder heads, you wouldn't need the Ferrari trademark to ensure that the ones you bought were flawless. The reason the trademark benefits you as a consumer, or for that matter Ferrari as a producer, is that it allows you to delegate that decision to Ferrari's engineers, machinists, etc., even when you're buying the part through a reseller; and then Ferrari can charge a premium for their reputation.)
Yes, the opinion of the general public is important in genericizing trademarks, but I don't think there's any serious question of whether "Deus Ex" has become a generic category of video games — it hasn't. The opinion of the general public is not important in the issues at hand.
I didn't realize there was a "right of first sale" in trademark law (obviously I'm not a lawyer) but what Wikipedia says about it is this:
> With reference to trade in tangible merchandise, such as the retailing of goods bearing a trademark, the "first sale" rule serves to immunize a reseller from infringement liability. Such protection to the reseller extends to the point where said goods have not been altered so as to be materially different from those originating from the trademark owner.
It seems to me that removing coupons from the box is "altering goods so as to be materially different from those originating from the trademark owner".
An OnLive coupon is absoolutely nothing to do with the trademark it is a seperate item that happens to come with it. They may have broken their contract, we don't know, but this has absolutely nothing to do with trademarks.
In my area, GameStop is the only place that has a wide selection of used games on the cheap. Some times its nice to blow $100 on video games and end up with 5 titles rather 2.
I will admit I would never buy a new game from GameStop. One time when I wanted to purchase PES 2011 they tried to sell me a brand new game with the packaging teared off. This disturbed me quite a bit. When I tried to explain to the manager it was the same thing as a used game to me at that point he didn't accept my argument. I bet they do this more than it gets reported.
Amazon works pretty well for this now, and the catalog is far deeper than any Gamestop's. It's even easy to sell your own stuff there through a variety of mechanisms.
I spent several years of my life at GameStop, and I miss it.
I was hired long before the EB/GameStop merger and watched as the company adopted EB's culture. GameStop was a bottom-up company, and EB was a top-down company. Much more authoritarian in its management, and saw the customer more like a piece of meat.
In the years just after the merger, I watched morale fall as the "scratch protection" plans became a priority, trade prices plummeted, and we stopped stocking PC games in several stores. They replaced GameStop's functional, DOS-based POS and adopted EB's slow, windows version. The transition was terrible, and the company seemed deaf to the complaints that holiday lines were getting longer and longer as they added features to an already slow and bloated system.
I quit and returned to school a couple years after the merger, it was the right decision, of course.
I loved my time at GameStop. I built a community around the store I managed and did everything I could to do right by the customer. I knew several managers (on both sides) who were as dedicated as I was to this goal. The culture at corporate was focused on marketing and was in no way supportive of this goal, and I'm saddened to see what they've become. But it was probably inevitable.
The comments here are pretty disdainful, and I definitely understand why. But there are a lot of good people working in the trenches that deserve thanks for what they've done for their customers.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadSo no, I'm not amazed.
If they were honest, they'd either send the boxes back to the manufacturer and ask for ones that didn't have the codes, or leave them intact. Stealing something out of the box, then wrapping it up like it's new and selling it... That's just dishonest.
I'm amazed at how Gamestop doesn't even try to lie or spin their way out. They state, "Square Enix packed a competitor’s coupon within the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution without our prior knowledge and we did pull these coupons."
Don't give them points for following the only course they had open to them.
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/08/gamestop-onlive/
For proprietary media like Playstation, XBox, etc they're going to be disintermediated whether they like it or not. They still can win in the PC arena.
So rather than acquiring strategically pointless startups like casual gaming site Kongregate, they'd be wise to ramp up their efforts to compete with Steam or even acquire whole digital distribution + consumption stacks like OnLive itself.
Competing with Steam is more a relationship challenge than a technical one, and of all companies GameStop is well placed with those existing relationships.
The downfall of Blockbuster should have proved that they need to change a long time ago.
They've already acquired companies to directly compete with both OnLive and Steam: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/01/gamestop-details-plans-fo...
They do have a lot of names and numbers, but you rarely see anything remotely like the "i <3 steam" or "i quit pirating games because steam does it right" abject love that valve gets.
I have serious doubts GameStop's corporate culture can accept gamers as anything other than something to extract dollars from, much less accept lower revenue and lower expenses.
Possibly future is Steam alike platforms with rent ability (such as gametap / metaboli). Simply put Netflix for games is the next thing, although looks like going to take another 3-5 years to get something decent in that field.
GameFly fulfills this very nicely right now, though it does lack an equivalent to Watch Instantly.
PC gaming will never die, it'll just keep changing form. Right now we're seeing it shift to the web, to tablets, etc.
Consoles obviously took massive amount of the market. PC hardware is still expensive if you want to play the new games, some games don't even bother release PC versions any more. But there's a hardcore gaming community and there are certain types of games that still suck in consoles. Even this is clear indication that PC gaming is dying, or will be a niche rather than a main stream thing.
You're arguments are all but copy and pasted from every other person who has brought this up in the last ten years or so. The reasons you stated haven't brought about the end of PC gaming yet.
The point is, I've never met, or even heard of, a GameStop fan. Maybe they can do it, maybe they can be the go to solution for online distribution. I just doubt it. They try a lot harder to get their hand in your wallet than they try to give you a fun gaming experience.
It's hard not to hear about valve promotions from non-valve people(sorry to harp on steam). I've never had that experience with GS, and i think it's because they make people uncomfortable.
my comment's peer's discussion of gamefly is exactly what i mean. high regard for GS just seems ... really really rare.
When I encounter limits that directly affect me, it's usually due to restrictions insisted upon by some brain dead publisher, but not by Valve.
So I (as a steam "fan" [not fanboy]) are really interested in where you think the service lets you down.
All true, but with the exception of the fact that Valve gouges their European clientele, none of that really disturbed me much.
The fact that I don't have to fumble with media to me is so valuable that it balances the disadvantages out.
But all your points are valid and while I probably wouldn't personally make use of a rental option it would sure be nice to have (for example: to evaluate a more expensive game before buying it. Thinking about it; This is probably the very reason why they don't have it, but I digress).
Trading or gifting games would probably be a no-brainer to implement, then again it would be bad for business.
Overall I just haven't found a comparable service that works so well, which probably makes me that relative fan.
That doesn't mean that there's no place for improvements or a better product / service in the future.
The same goes for renting. Granting people the ability to try out a game before buying it could increase sales. Many of the games I play I don't even come close to finishing. If there were a cheaper (and easier) option to try out a game for an hour than buying the full game in a physical store and then hoping I can trade it off later on, I might very well be interested.
I never quite understood why shareware games went out of favour.
As for problems with not being able to re-sell or rent games, that's not so much of a problem for me because I don't do that anyway. I would only really need to sell such games when they take up too much physical space, and with Steam and digital delivery it's not an issue.
For me it's the lack of a resale option. With console games I can get them on the day they come out, beat them in a week or two and get half my money back.
This means a AAA title that costs $60.00 actually only costs me $30.00.
I haven't found a way to sell steam games yet:( This means that the same game on steam would have to cost half of what it costs in retail chains to be worth my while.
Now Steam occasionally does have such games due to sales, but it just can't compete with the new releases.
I think the PC gaming market's relationship with GameStop can be described as "disgusted." Lots of PC gamers dislike GameStop (rockpapershotgun.com and pcgamer.com and their forums as prime examples of how people feel about them). Exclusive pre-order bonuses, cruddy behavior like this, ect.
Hardly a startup.
It (or something like it) is the future, there's no doubt about that.
When you couple pretty poor quality with persistent, noticeable latency, you do not have a recipe for success.
What you're saying is nontrivial and may not even be workable, because it's impossible to really separate "stupid slow player" from "player whose latency is high enough that he can't react".
I used to work at one in HS. It's really easy to reseal a package with shrink wrap.
Disclaimer: I wish I was an investor.
There are many reasons why this is bad, first and foremost that this is where a lot of the action is right now and those of us with less than 10 million available to invest are stuck investing in only the rest of the economy. Which, from what I gather from the news, is pretty mismanaged in the US.
After trying out OnLive for 5 minutes even without playing, it is obvious that this is the future for most gamers.
In other news, digital distribution to me makes sense i.e. Steam, and full downloads direct to console HD and the like, but it just isn't a large enough market share yet IMO. These games are humongous it's kind of pain to keep running out of disk space, at least as things stand currently.
Slow broadband speed and download caps would limit your ability to download games over and over.
I don't play a lot of games, but every time I do pick one up (since GameStop is virtually the only remaining B&M game store in many places), it hasn't been a consumer-friendly experience.
What would be more interesting is if Square Enix and GameSpot have some contract for how to sell these games, and GameSpot are breaking this.
I think that traditionally it's the trademark owner who gets to define what their trademark is allowed to be applied to, not a "hunter off the street." (Did you mean "punter"?) This sometimes has deleterious effects — for example, Saran Wrap no longer contains any Saran, and Kaopectate in the US no longer consists of kaolinite and pectin — but by and large it's a sensible policy, in light of the information asymmetry between consumers and producers that makes trademark law a reasonable bargain in the first place.
("Information asymmetry"? I mean, if you knew how to make flawless replacement cylinder heads for your Ferrari, you'd likely make them yourself instead of buying them from Ferrari; and if you knew how to identify flawless cylinder heads, you wouldn't need the Ferrari trademark to ensure that the ones you bought were flawless. The reason the trademark benefits you as a consumer, or for that matter Ferrari as a producer, is that it allows you to delegate that decision to Ferrari's engineers, machinists, etc., even when you're buying the part through a reseller; and then Ferrari can charge a premium for their reputation.)
If anything, right of first sale (remember GameStop buys games in bulk from publishers) protects them.
> With reference to trade in tangible merchandise, such as the retailing of goods bearing a trademark, the "first sale" rule serves to immunize a reseller from infringement liability. Such protection to the reseller extends to the point where said goods have not been altered so as to be materially different from those originating from the trademark owner.
It seems to me that removing coupons from the box is "altering goods so as to be materially different from those originating from the trademark owner".
I will admit I would never buy a new game from GameStop. One time when I wanted to purchase PES 2011 they tried to sell me a brand new game with the packaging teared off. This disturbed me quite a bit. When I tried to explain to the manager it was the same thing as a used game to me at that point he didn't accept my argument. I bet they do this more than it gets reported.
Removing the OnLive coupon may hide one (small) competitor, but does nothing to stop GameStop's real competition in the PC space.
I was hired long before the EB/GameStop merger and watched as the company adopted EB's culture. GameStop was a bottom-up company, and EB was a top-down company. Much more authoritarian in its management, and saw the customer more like a piece of meat.
In the years just after the merger, I watched morale fall as the "scratch protection" plans became a priority, trade prices plummeted, and we stopped stocking PC games in several stores. They replaced GameStop's functional, DOS-based POS and adopted EB's slow, windows version. The transition was terrible, and the company seemed deaf to the complaints that holiday lines were getting longer and longer as they added features to an already slow and bloated system.
I quit and returned to school a couple years after the merger, it was the right decision, of course.
I loved my time at GameStop. I built a community around the store I managed and did everything I could to do right by the customer. I knew several managers (on both sides) who were as dedicated as I was to this goal. The culture at corporate was focused on marketing and was in no way supportive of this goal, and I'm saddened to see what they've become. But it was probably inevitable.
The comments here are pretty disdainful, and I definitely understand why. But there are a lot of good people working in the trenches that deserve thanks for what they've done for their customers.