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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."
Gamestop has pretty much abandoned PC gaming in favor of console games. Going by the local ~50 odd gamestops I doubt most of their employees even understand what they're selling beyond "Yo I so own at halo brah".
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Or, maybe it's "I'd rather not have had someone else's machine (or kid brother, or whatever) scratch up the disc I spent $60 + tax on." Beyond that, it's simply a matter of integrity. If someone else has played the game, it's not a virg... I mean, it's not new anymore.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Hate to break it to you but...
wait, no, I'm ecstatic to break this to you:
Your new car has been driven by several other people. Someone else popped its cherry.
And that $35,000 new car you just bought (that isn't really new) is way more than the $35 disk you just bought. And when it comes down to it, you can usually tell if you didn't get all the bits you paid for on a CD, but it's more difficult to tell if your new car has been abused.
In some ways, it's probably better to be played. At least you know there are no immediate catastrophic errors on the disk.
"Employees playing those games may destroy the usefulness of those games."
Most of the publishers already did that when they included DRM in the first place.
Yep. Had an acquaintance that worked at a gamestop for awhile, and they had the same policy. Still, I never buy from GS in general because I just don't care for my game packages to be pre-opened, even if they are "new" prior to my purchase. I guess it comes down to an issue of trust. If you can't trust the store to give you straight information about games (without trying to upsell you unnecessary crap), how can you trust them to be telling the truth about the condition of that pre-gutted game?
They only keep boxes for the console games on the floor and keep all actual copies of the game behind the counter.
Still, if it's as big of a problem as the OP suggests, then I think they'd simply do the same with the PC games too.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
And that $35,000 new car you just bought (that isn't really new) is way more than the $35 disk you just bought. And when it comes down to it, you can usually tell if you didn't get all the bits you paid for on a CD, but it's more difficult to tell if your new car has been abused.
... when I buy a product, I expect it to come in its original packaging straight from the factory. When its out of its packaging, I have no idea where the product has been. Sure, it could have been safely stowed in drawer, but seeing the assholes who work at my local gamestop, I can only assume the game has been used as a coaster for a cigarette stuffed bottle of stale miller light. How am I to know otherwise?
... hey, if you are looking for new games to buy, I got a bunch of them at my house. Give me a buzz sometime and I'll warm up my shrink wrap machine.
A video game is not a car. When a consumer buys a car, he has different expectations than buying a video game. The other neat item that destroys your equation is a little thing called an odometer that tells the user precisely how much wear and tear is on the vehicle. And if the odometer reads a high mileage, you can negotiate a lower rate. When a consumer buys a "new" video game from gamestop, the price is always 59.99 even if the box has been opened.
In some ways, it's probably better to be played. At least you know there are no immediate catastrophic errors on the disk.
So you are saying it is better to buy a used copy of a game, seeing as how the early adopter has already tested the game for you? Sure, I have no problem with that. That's why I buy a used copy of the game. I don't need a "food taster" for my crap when I buy it new.
Look
And I still haven't reached you
I worked at Babbages in the mid-90s. The policy of employees taking products home to become familiar with them was encouraged. And really, from a standpoint of being able to inform the customer better, it was a great idea. PC products were not excluded from this policy. Granted it was in '96 or so, and there was an equal amount of disk-based products as CD-based ones, the internet wasn't that big of a deal, and games/products were connected as most are today.
As for the "guts", when I was there we generally only gutted one copy, and that was what got put on the shelf for display. If it was the last copy and we had to put the game back inside the box, we'd tell the customer we were doing that. I don't remember anything sneaky being done regarding that.