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GameStop Selling Games Played By Employees As New
Kotaku reports on a practice by GameStop which allows employees to "check out" new copies of video games, play them, then return them to be sold as new. Quoting:
"When a shipment of video games initially arrives at a store, managers are told to 'gut' several copies of the game, removing the disc or cartridge from the packaging so it can be displayed on the shelf without concern of theft, according to our sources. The games are then placed in protective sleeves or cases under the counter. If a customer asks why the game is not sealed they are typically told the the game is a display copy. The game is still sold as new. When check-out games are returned, we were told, they are placed with the gutted display copies. If a customer asks about these, they are typically told they are display copies, not that they have been played before. Since the copies are often placed with display copies, even managers and employees typically don't know which of these games have been played and which haven't."
The only games they'd do this for are console games, which don't have DRM worries. PC games, AFAIK, are all sold sealed.
This policy has been around longer than that. I was an employee exercising the checkout policy back in the floppy / cartridge days, at several of the stores which would eventualy merge to become Gamestop (c. 1993-1997) This is old news, the lawsuits about it have come and gone. The policy has been disbanded, then re-instated several times. There's no use getting your panties twisted about it now.
Look: If you're reading this article, it's safe to assume you've been in a Gamestop (or EB, or Babbage's, or Software Etc., or Funcoland, or whatever your local store was before being devoured by ConGlomCo). So it is because of your undoubted nightmare customer experience in such places that when I tell you the following, you will know that it is true: working there was a fucking horrorshow. The hours were terrible, the customers obnoxious, the colleagues irritating, the stink from the shrinkwrap machine quite literally poisonous, and management incompetent, malicious, or both. Mind you, I'm talking about how bad it was 15 years ago when the stores were competing with each other. I can only imagine that it's gotten worse for employees since the industry consolidated completely, and you can no longer just walk up to the other side of the mall and get a job with the competition.
These stores pay minimum wage, offer employees almost no discount on the products they sell (and indeed often restrict employees' access to hot items like new-release consoles), and employees are forbidden to hang out mucking about with the in-store demo kiosks during downtime or off-duty hours. Yet at the same time, the customers and management demand that the employees somehow be knowledgable about all the product in the store. These products have consistently sold for $50 - $80 apiece for years. As an employee, you're supposed to have played everything, yet as an employee, you're subject to the same "you broke the shrink, you own it" return policy on $140 a week for the average part-timer. It's an impossible situation for a 19-year-old trying to make rent, groceries, and tuition, much less a sad-sack 30-something manager with kids, pulling in $25k a year on a 70-hour work week if they're lucky.
Gamestop didn't post record profits by paying their line employees well. Everyone's a disposable cog, and they'd just as soon fire you as look at you. Don't think as an employee you aren't constantly reminded by management about the eager stream of salivating 16-year-olds who think working in a game store would be SO COOL, dreaming of replacing you.
Given all this, do you think anyone in their right mind would work at that store if they didn't offer employees what amounts to a free lending library of the newest titles? What other incentive could there possibly be to irritate people with membership clubs, pushy pre-orders and used game pitches, and the soul-crushing pain of listening to the loop of that piped in tv network all day?
If it really bothers you, shop elsewhere. I certainly do, those fucking vultures won't ever get my money again. If you do decide to shop there, use some common sense and check your disks for scratches before you leave the store. It's not that hard.
But seriously, quit the whining about the "used sold as new" crap. The checkout policy is the price you pay for having specialty knowledge behind the register at minimum wage prices.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
I used to work at Gamestop and we could only check out console games for obvious reasons. Everything else is true though, except my manager pushed that we check out used games as much as possible and he inspected new games when we brought them back. If it was scratched at all, you got the pleasure of buying it. It was a pretty sweet perk to have though. Obviously Gamestop's thinking is that they want a staff who knows what they are selling.