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Game Retailers' Return Policies Criticized
Thanks to GamersWithJobs for their opinion piece discussing the allegedly harsh return policies for videogame retailers. According to the author, "There is no reasonable reason... why a [non-defective, but unwanted] product in such condition should not be returnable, and any retailer who refuses such should not be burdened with customers or money." However, as a forum reply points out: "...if the policy on returns is too liberal, game stores will turn into free game rental outlets for people who don't want to pay for software." Have retailers been changing policies, and where does the balance lie on this subject?
If the box is not open, you can return it.
If it's not, you can exchange it for the exact same game.
There's a reason game studios release demo versions. If you like it, and it runs on your computer, buy it. Otherwise, caveat emptor.
...only give a replacement copy for defective games. Honestly, it's not that hard. There's plenty of other examples of the retail world of this working just fine. Otherwise, yeah, it's pretty much a free rental place. Don't like it? Rent the games from Gamefly, the Netflix of the gaming world. Doesn't help with PC games, but for any console games, it's really cool. As seen on Penny Arcade.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
Everyone keeps saying to try out the demo, but if the demo works that's no guarantee the game works--especially since copy protective CD-checks are getting more draconian and obscure as well (obscure as in not working properly with all hardware). Unreal Tournament 2003 is an example that comes to mind--I played the demo, I bought the game, game does not work. It think a patch fixed the problem eventually--but it seems to me I should have been perfectly justified in returning the product immediately for a full refund (or store credit at least), open box or no open box.
Gamestop (which I guess is the same corporate empire as Software Etc.) used to have an insanely liberal return policy as late as last year--a salesman actually encouraged me to try a game and return it if I didn't like it the next day.
BTW, no, I am not one of those anti-P2P people. I just think that it would be a pretty bad move to sell people products that can be copied, and then take it back as a return.
The difference is that a book isn't easily or economically copyable. Basically NOBODY takes back CDs or casettes for refund, because they are easy to copy.
In my view, I think it's a fairly reasonable policy for a store to apply to videogames and other software.
However, it is interesting to note that EBGames, or whatever they call themselves now, appears to be the most successful game-focused store chain, and they have VERY forgiving return policies, or at least they used to. Babbage's, its competitor, which had a stringent return policy, has never been particularly financially healthy.
If people think that $50 is too much to risk on a game they know little about then they need to either a) start paying attention and gathering information before purchasing, b) wait for games to decrease in price, or c) stop buying video games altogether.
Of course, these days bookstores are happy to let you sit there reading their books and drinking coffee all day and not buying the books at all.
And they probably actually sell more books because of that policy.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
I like your idea, though it has a big problem. I'll take GBA games as an example. Nintendo ships demo roms of games. First level, or only one character selectable, however they want to cripple it.
In order for them to be accurate representations of the game, they either have to
a) give you read-only cartridges as demos. No electronic delivery, high-cost for them.
b) provide an emulator + rom download, thus expediting one of the two roadblocks to pure piracy (the emulator).
c) Give you a read-write cartridge, and a rom download. You play it in your GBA. This is effectively b, but it plays on the console instead of on your computer.
There is no cheap solution that does not encourage piracy in the case of the GBA.
For optical media, it's a bit easier. They can put demos on other game discs in the extra space, or ship whole demo discs (PS2 does this - the JamPack demo discs. Xbox has these too). These tend to runabout 9$ a pop.
But, they still won't let you download and burn demos to disc and run them. That would be one step closer to letting you download illegally ripped roms and playing them on unmodded hardware.
FWIW, I bet Xbox will be the first succesful case of electronically delivered console game demos. Live + hard drive means they can give you a game demo in a controlled manner that doesn't contribute to piracy. That's a good thing.
PS2 could do the same, provided they get a network set up. They have the hard-disk add on.
Nintendo could have done this with the GBA player. A Flash memory unit in the player, and a hook into the broadband adapter to populate it, then customers could download GBA-cart demos and play them on the tv.
I guess the point is use the trusted hardware that your target market already has to deliver the demos.
If a naked woman walks down a dark alley, should she expect to be safe?
Just as she would probably be fined for public indecency or some crap, anyone that took the oppurtunity to rape her would be imprisoned for rape.
You tell me, which is the worse crime?
As for copy protection, no console using standard formats is going to have strong copy protection forever. The lifespan of a console is just too long for that. While I never have owned a modded console, I've known a handful of people that do, and they get their games primarily from rental.
As for PC games, most of the people I know like to play PC games online, so copying just doesn't happen (because of the fairly universal methods of locking out multiple users of a CD Key). The problem, though, is that many of the copy protection schemes break functionality for legitimate users, while anyone that really wants to copy the disc eventually (usually within days) can (hey, I've used plenty of no-CD cracks for games I only wanted to use offline, but I have the original CDs, too).
Still, every publisher and developer expects a reasonable number of purchases for a good, well-developed game. If their expectations are too high, they'll find that out, and adjust their budget for their next title or perish. The console developers and copy protection software developers will continue to do what they can to protect their investment, but in the long run the best they can hope for is limiting copying and pissing off as few customers as possible.
-PainKilleR-[CE]