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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 site seems slasdotted, so I can't RTFA, but my first thought is: what about games with draconian DRM that allows you to install it only a limited number of times? Employees playing those games may destroy the usefulness of those games.
Why should I care if a game has been played before?
I cannot believe this is just now becoming a "scandal."
I was a Gamestop assistant store manager in the early 2000's. This was policy way back then, and we abused the shit out of it. Yes, policy said you could only check out one thing at a time for a certain period of time (I remember it being six days, maybe things have changed ...) and you could only check out any given product once, and no products like OSes or consoles. In practice, we took whatever we wanted whenever we wanted for however long we wanted. All the managers covered for each other and the other employees when the district bigwigs came by. On inventory days everyone brought in a list of things to add to inventory. This was SOP for all the stores in my district, and pretty much every store nationwide if you believe the chit chat at the annual store manager meetings.
"Gutting" has been policy for at least that long too. Per policy, you'd "gut" one copy of a game and when it came time to sell, you'd repackage and re-shrink wrap it. We were supposed to shrink wrap the shit out of everything (Dreamcast software for example: pull the entire CD tray out of the jewel case, shrink the case and put it on the sales floor, shrink the CD tray and secure it behind the counter), but in practice that was too much work once there were 500+ PSX titles, 200+ DC titles, etc. I made sure there wasn't anything obvious left over (stickers with SKU numbers on CDs, for example), but many people didn't. We were also instructed when selling the gutted copy to just walk it to the back and shrink wrap it without offering any explanation. The old pre-EB POS system (which was written in QuickBASIC Professional, and I swear I am not making that up) used to say "Gut checks save lives!" as a part of the screen saver.
This is been going on for well over 10 years. CD-based software borrowed out and scratched. Cartridge-based software borrowed and sold as "new" with saved data on it. Ask any Gamestop employee if they pay for magazines or tax software. Ever wonder why every Gamestop has a shrink wrapper in back? Do you not know how to tell the difference between factory shrink wrap and re-wrap? Factory wrap is "crinklier" ... and there's always a seam somewhere where a small machine with a glorified hair dryer can't produce one (usually down the middle of the back of the package).
Oh, and my apologies to whoever ended up buying that one copy of XP Home we had. I didn't realize at the time that the product key couldn't be reused.
I'm quite surprised that the rest of the world is just now being made aware of this practice. I worked for two competing shopping-mall chain video game stores in the mid-to-late 90's, and both of them had policies almost identical to this. The shrink-wrap machine in the back room made the fact that an item was "checked out" very simple to conceal from the customers.
To be completely honest, I really don't care, as long as:
- The materials are sold to me in a "new" condition
- If it requires any sort of registration key, I better not ever find out it's already been registered
Without this policy in place, I'm fairly certain a lot of video game stores would simply stop having employees; it's one of the best perks of working at one. Discounts are nice, but playing for free? That's even better.
Don Head
UNIX/Linux Administrator
Battletoads. Do they have it?
Now, I understand why my original copy of World Of Warcraft doesn't work !
Many years ago I worked at the Harvey Norman computer chain in Australia and the games guys often took games home at the weekend to check out. The reasoning was simple - if you've played a game and a customer wants advice on which game to buy you're in a position where you actually know what you're talking about rather than just staring at them blankly.
This was before the days of the internet being widely available, but I think the policy still holds true. If you're buying a game at a marked up price from your local software mart then the staff there better know what they're selling - otherwise how can you justify the retail space and the markup?
So far from being a scandal, I call this sensible business practice.
--- Nick, hard at work
... that pre-played was the way to go. Now there's no difference at all!
I worked as an Assistant Manager for Software ETC back in the early 1990's and "Employee Checkout" was policy back then. The article just reads like some disgruntled employee trying to create scandal.
"Like New" when something has been used like that. Am I correct?
They have a horrible return policy, combined with this, why would anyone buy stuff there (seriously)? Just get yourself an Amazon Prime membership and order stuff from Amazon!
In game they dont have any kind of check out procedure which I ever had the power to use - sometimes we got promo copies of games which would be handed out as prizes to staff and then the staff would share them, but they were mostly shit games and no one gave a crap (I got sega superstars tennis hahaha).
From my friends, gamestation (which game now owns) DOES allow employees to check out disks, paying for them if they break it etc. But now all GAME and gamestation stores have a disk cleaning machine which will remove like 75% of scratches leaving the disk looking "as new".
Both stores "gut" games and put real boxes onto the shop floor, along with inserts sent from H/O. Some inserts are crap/unreadable/wrong and so you sometimes need the real box for the customer to be able to see what they are really buying.
However, even if we didn't gut games, i'd still say that about 5% are scratched IN the box, due to them falling loose during shipping etc. Luckly we can just disk clean them for free in that case and the customer is happy 99% of the time. If they kick off we might swap the disk for them for a brand new copy, but note it and if they return that too then we will refuse to return it again generally - all this is at managers disgression.
I no longer work for game, but this is how it was up until about 2 months ago.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
The same thing happened to me when Assassin's Creed was released for 360. On release day I did not pre-order and called ahead to make sure they had copies in the store. They assured me they did.
...just like I can with a new copy?
When I got there and asked for it they said they didn't have it. I said I had just called and been told there were copies. The guy behind the counter turned to the guy next to him and said "Hey [co-worker], were you, uhhh..." and trailed off. He replied Lumberg-style with a "Yeeeahhhh, I was going to take it home... Naw, that's ok, sell it."
I was all like what the fuck man, and asked them if it was an open box copy that had been taken home by employees and played. He said yeah. I asked if I would be charged full price. The guy said of course and looked at me like he was the confused one. The three other employees nearby were similarly non-plussed. "If there's anything wrong with it you can return it."
I took the cash in my hand and put it away, said no thanks. There was another Gamestop on the way home that had it, nevermind the two Best Buys with obscene pallets of copies.
It was a braindead move on the employees' parts and I'd hate to think the manager would approve of that going down in front of a customer. But that's what happens when you have a bunch of kids running the front of house, unsupervised and with a shrink wrapper, and it's no surprise it's happening everywhere.
I treat the Gamestop sales counter like a casino chip-exchange. I watch every hand at every time, especially when they ask a co-worker to pull out a game. The kids back there do stupid, careless shit with your credit card/license/games/money, and they spend most of their free time dreaming up scams to get more money and more games. That's the business!
No offense to any upstanding Slashdotters working at Gamestop. I'm clearly talking about your slovenly coworkers.
Every xbox 360 game I bought has a special sticker on top that is broken once it is opened. I doubt you could easily replace that. I have seen this on US versions, Asian (HK) Versions and Japanese Versions.
So how can you fake that?
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
No scratching or anything, just your run of the mill dye fade.
Stamped CDs and DVDs have no "dye" to fade. Was the plastic still clear? (Use a bright light to see through the dark-purple PS1 disc plastic.) Did the laser in the console still read other discs? Was there rot or other damage close to around the edge?
Digital media are either good or bad. There is no wear and tear to the data itself. Either it works or it does not.
Watch your tense: works != will work. Imagine this situation: Disc A has no wear. Disc B has some wear, but not enough to affect readability after error correction. Disc B will probably become unreadable first.
I think any game store who pulls this crap is committing FRAUD.
For starters they are LYING.
Anyone who knowingly sells a game that has been played is complicit and should be jailed.
Sounds extreme? It is, and it should be. Trust is not something that should be taken lightly. It's a much smaller scale version of Enron. Dishonesty is so rampant everywhere, and when it rises to fraud, it must be punished.
Oh, that's right. What about OEM limited warranty on quality? By selling it new, aren't you holding the vendor accountable for damage that might have been done by a store employee? I'm sure everyone's noticed in the back about Limited Warranty. Who honors that? The vendor, not the store. If employees damage goods that are later sold as new, and returned as defective, and then returned to the vendor for a wholesale refund, then the store is defrauding the vendor by sticking it with a fraudulent return, fraudulent because the defect was caused by the store.
Also, there's another reason.
If employees are allowed to front-run like this, they are also not held accountable to the same standards that regular customers are. If an employee checks out a game, damages it, and returns it to the shrinkwrap machine, then the unlucky customer that gets stuck buying it is pretty much SOL because he can't prove it wasn't him that broke it, let alone that it was the employee.
I repeat, letting employees borrow new games, and then selling them as new, is fraud, with a capital F. It is fraud against the customer, and if the store returns defective products to the vendor, it is fraud against the vendor as well.
I have been boycotting GameStop for years. Ever since they sold a copy of a game I pre-ordered. In light of these new revelations, maybe they didn't "sell" it.
I was a manager of several Babbage's stores way back in the distant past. Babbage's was the company (along with Software etc after a merger) that Gamestop came from. All the way back then we were allowed to "check out" software. The rule at least then was that you could only do so if the software didn't require registration or keys to use. So pretty much no Microsoft software, but most other software and video games of the time were fair game.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
It's not like people didn't already know (or guess) this. But I am curious what laws or FTC rules might apply to this. I frequently see modest "open box" price reductions for electronic items like TVs and such, and honestly. I'm not sure it's unreasonable to expect the same of software that is no longer in original, manufacturer-sealed state.
I had to work through that "crappy teenager jobs" stage at McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and Westfair foods. It looked so promising at 12, when I noticed the till staff was using the work pc to play shadowrun on Genesis.
I wasn't aware of this, it's good info to know, but really no big deal. As long as the game is sold in a new condition, it's fine with me. Really, they have to do this so that employees can be knowledgeable on the products they sell.
Anyway, from my experience, I've bought many games from Gamestop, both new and used. They've all be in fine condition, with most of the used games indistinguishable from a new copy.
Hello there fellow ex-Babbagarian. I worked there a long time ago in a city far, far away (Store 9... Which no longer exists)
This is old news. And not just Babbage's and GameStop. I know of other software stores that have allowed this. The main reasoning behind it is so the employees can familiarize themselves with the products so that they are more informed when the customers have questions.
I don't mind used software or display software, as long as the disc isn't all scratched up. It's not like a write-once form of media is going to catch a virus (as opposed to ye olde days of 3.5" floppies). The same sentiment goes towards DVDs.
I think it would be a lot worse in other types of stores where employees could be trying out food or undies. 8(
Urban Legions
> The checkout policy is the price you pay for having specialty knowledge behind the register at minimum wage prices.
I rather expect the local GameStop employees to have played as many store copies as possible. I like my local shop-- there's the guy that knows RPGs, the girl that is up on DS titles, and the fat guy everyone ignores. It's like having 3 free reviewers who remember what kind of stuff I like. They've saved me from crap games (i.e. impulse buys I later find got lousy reviews) many a time. The store should comp them titles so they can answer my questions.
Really, more businesses need to take a drug dealer approach-- know your product, know your customers, assume your customer needs _something_ and just make sure you sell them something that gets them to come back.
A.
I had a few friends that worked for Babages back in the early 90's They did the same all the time. Again the management wanted them to take them home and play them so they could advise customers on it.
They had all the equipment in the back to reseal the games and CD's so no one would know.
The Lunatick, Carpe Corpus!
So you got a bonus piece of cheese with your game and you're complaining!?
it's easier for the dealer to roll back the odometer
and against the law. Also, from the wiki... cars today are using digital odometers which aren't as easy to rollback.
I remember one time I went to a Gamestop to buy something. The guy at the front of the line was trying to return an xbox 360 that it turns out he didn't want, and wanted store credit back for it. The employee said he couldn't accept it and they got into a bit of an argument. The employee explained that the only thing he could do was replace it with another xbox if it was defective or accept it as a used trade in. The guy kept on complaining and then the employee went all high and mighty and said, "Look this has been opened, I can't take this back and sell it as 'new'" The guy did eventually manage to get store credit, but the employee there was pretty indignant about it.
The guy next in line then asks for a new copy of Madden 08. The employee then proceed to get an opened copy of the game and then sells it to him at as a new copy. My jaw dropped at the hypocrisy of it all.
I kind of wanted to call him out on it, but at that point I was already running late and just wanted to get the fuck out of there.
But yeah, this was 2 years ago, so this is nothing new.
Are they serious with this? Who cares? It's CD. Software. We're not talking about underwear people. Get over it! As long as the CD is not damaged or unplayable, then who really cares?
They are only allowed to check out used games over night now. Though yes, it was corporate policy to allow employees to check out display copies of the new gamea overnight.
In addition to that, they NEED to put open empty boxes on the shelves because if they didn't, games would sprout legs and walk. When I worked there and PC games were still put on the floor with games in boxes, theft shrinkage on PC games was staggeringly high (somewhere in the ballpark of 20%).
You people are getting all uppity, but I hate to tell you that to a degree all stores are like this. Do you think that most stores don't flex their return policies for employees?
Oh and in this case, the policy existed so the employees can actually make recommendations to customers. Considering how little they get paid, it's not like they can play every game released by buying them.
I recently purchased littleBigPlanet from blockbuster, there wasn't a CD in the rack so I asked the sales clerk and she fished out a box that looked new at a glance.
When I started opening it at home, I noticed the shrink wrap was pretty loose and didn't have the neat glued corners like other discs, it looked saran wrapped by an amateur.
Furthermore a hinge on the box was broken, the circular springy bit in the center that holds the disc had a couple of teeth missing so the disc was rattling inside and the disc itself had 2 very visible, deep and long scratches.
The store would not accept a return (package opened) or even admit they sold me a used disc for full price. I had quite a bit of argument with the store manager who kept insisting it was my fault.
Lesson learned: Never buy from a brick and mortar store again, they'll nickel and dime you to death.
I work at Gamestop NOW. I've never heard of this. At least not as a store policy. It's entirely possible a few stores do this, but those of us who follow the rules(which is most of us) just wait until a used copy is traded in and then we try it out. We have a rental policy with used crap, but new stuff we do not take out of the sleeve. We DO NOT take out PC games. They are only sold as new and thus we cannot use them.
My guess is they interviewed a few bad employees. Not "bad" as in liars or people who hate Gamestop, but "bad" as in the kind of people who generally ignore the rules themselves and then get the fortune of being saddled with a boss who doesn't really care. I know(at least in Westchester, NY) that we can only rent out the used, and anyone caught doing that to new games gets fired.
What sucks about this is the games ARE new, and we still get the hours of demands from customers that we shouldn't charge as much for the unsealed copies. And now stuff like this comes along, the three or four who read Kotaku and don't already buy used are gonna let this stupid rumor spread. Which is going to, in turn, lead to more motherly figures giving me the business about how they heard from their computer nerd children that Gamestop is lying to them. After all(in the public eye), if one store lies, all of them do.
This probably won't change things much, but odds are the company is going to pull some very unhelpful shit now to ensure the appearance of compliance. After all, if you read that handbook through, Gamestop does not come off as fond of it's employees. Seriously, they all but write glowering emotes in the book.
Which also reminds me, the reason I'm posting this anonymously is because if you publicly speak for Gamestop(positively or negatively), and are under the employ of Gamestop, then you will be fired. No questions, just the axe.
EB did this since the late 80's / early 90's. If it's only been noticed right now, then is it really a problem?
I tend to buy games used anyway; that way they are cheaper and I know that scratches are probably there already. If they don't work, I can return them within a few days and get my money back or get another used copy.
Gamestop and cohorts tend to be my last choice for new or used games, since "used" to them tends to mean $5 off of retail (which isn't much of a deal for a $50+ game that could be up to a year old). My alternative is a nice books/music/movies/games store called Hastings that tends to chop $10-20 off of retail for used games, especially games 6 months and older. Since they have a standard return policy for used games, I tend to look there for games before Gamestop and cohorts.
In short, try to look for other game stores if possible if you don't like Gamestop et al.'s practices. It seems like the stores that sell games exclusively can be a pretty big rip-off if you're trying to get brand-new games. And as one poster says, Best Buy and other big-box stores tend to have full pallets of the same new games where Gamestop may only stock a few.
When I bought Metal Gear 4 for the PS3 from a Gamestop in Austin all they had left was the gutted copy. I asked if there was a discount since it was opened and they gave me 10%. I thought that was reasonable.
Record stores (some of you maybe old enough to remember such things) play the CDs in the store before people purchase them too! Don't really see the problem.
I worked at Babbage's (store #1! Northpark Mall, Dallas) in the early 90s, and it was required that all display copies of console games be gutted. The manager would sometimes let sales associates borrow contents, too (unless it was a title we kept running out of). Babbage's eventually became Gamestop.
I never borrowed any games (I didn't have a current console, for one thing) but I did have a lot of fun with the shrink wrap machine. :) And yes, people did steal empty boxes from display sometimes.
Get off my launchpad!
selling used games and saying they're new is FRAUD.
I think if a store sells used games such as Gamestop does then they should not be allowed to open a display copy for any reason. Twice I have had issues with buying new games from them that had been opened. I bought my daughter a new DS game for Christmas. It was the last copy they had of that title and I remarked then about the case being opened and was told if they didn't remove the game it would get shoplifted. Upon playing it on Christmas day we found saved games from months before on the cartridge. I had paid for a new game and got a used one instead. Another time my son had bought a previously opened game that had 2 DVDs. We didn't know that at the time. A week or so later while playing he is prompted to insert disk 2 which was not in the package. We took it back to the store and they had the second disk still behind the counter. Both times they made good, swapping out the used game with a new one for the first incident and giving me the missing disk on the second, but Gamestop lost me as a customer. I was not compensated for having to make a return trip to the store due to their negligence. I now buy new games from Amazon and if I were to buy a used game it would be from Craigslist where I get a decent price, not $5 off full retail.
A big, fat phony!
The wiki is wrong - digital odometers are the easiest things to roll back. MUCH easier than the old-style ones, which had a tendancy to "bounce" if you hit the dash after they were turned back. Just go to any border crossing where vehicles are being trans-shipped - they're adjusted from miles to kilometers or vice versa with nothing more complicated than a laptop. As for vehicles that aren't trans-shipped - I've seen a Jeep Cherokee go from 68,000 km to 20,000 km after a visit to "the shop" - the guy who does this from his home. Obviously, I don't approve - as far as I'm concerned, it's theft - but going digital made it easier, not harder, to cheat.
Of course, they do it on the cheap, so that other computers on the car will have a discrepancy - but who checks ANY of the computers for tampering? Nobody - the dealer who buys to resell might suspect, but as long as he doesn't check, he can always claim "I didn't know."
NEVER let the car dealer pick up your plates for you. A lot of people write their mileage on the back when trading in their car - the dealer doesn't want you to see the old reg, so he'll offer to pick up your new plates "as a convience to you." I saw an employee of Silver Star (BMW dealer) try to pick up a set of plates with a mileage declaration of 80,000 km, when the title said 135,000 km., so don't think that even BMWs are that hard to monkey with.
Who cares...
The DRM issue is sort of interesting but the bottom line is that if a situation ever occurred where a DRM game you just bought was unplayable because someone else had already activated it you could easily get the issue taken care of through the store or through the game developer.Sure it isn't right, but has it ever happened to you? Besides, soon enough all video games will most likely be sold/subscribed exclusively online.
So what's gonna be on Slashdot tomorrow, McDonald's employees swapping toys in happy meals? I try not to give people who make approximately minimum wage a hard time about their jobs.
I used to work at Babbage's, which is the heritage of Gamestop. This was back around 1989-1992. We were allowed to check out software, return it and then shrink wrap it back up. They were still sold as new. At the time, I looked at it as a benefit of employment, and it also gave me an opportunity to gain some knowledge about what it was that we were selling. If a game was good, I could recommend it to a customer. If a game was bad, I might even dissuade a customer who was on the fence.
If its so important to you than look at the DVD before you buy it. Besides, you can exchange the game within 30 days with another copy.
I was "Mr. Shrinkwrap" at a couple of Egghead Software stores in the Tampa Bay area in the late 80s. Most of my day was spent reshrinking returned software and/or products the employees took home to try.
If you purchased any productivity software from one of my stores worth more than $100, chances are you did not buy a package that was honestly "new". The dopey women who ran the local outlets were always taking car trunks full of stuff home to "evaluate". Fortunately, I was very good at my job.
No one was less surprised than me when the chain folded.
Seriously, what kind of people buy games from retail anymore?
The price of games are increasing and you rarely get a sealed game. A lot of places only give you the knackered display box and a game form a plastic bag.
Let's say for a minute that the employees don't play the games. Does it matter? You're paying $60/£45 for a game and you get a box that's been fingered by every nose picking mongoloid to walk through the shop and you get a disc that will often have finger prints or scratches on it. You may also be lucky to get a box full of price tag and promo stickers that, if you try to take them off, leave you with those lovely ugly sticker marks all over it.
When you take it they'll almost certainly say they can't trust that you're not a thief because the fucking box is open.
In the UK HMV and Game Station are the absolute worst for this even after Game bought up Game Station they don't use the same rules. Game isn't bad, usually you get a new sealed game unless it actually is the last one. Even then I don't think I should get a lesser product purely because I bought the last one.
In the case of Game Station, I know they sell used games as new. I think with the advent of disc based games they forgot carts can save and I've bought a few GBA games from there that had save games on them. One game was completed. An HMV employee told me they do it to save space. I'm not sure how you save space by storing the box in a different location than it's contents.
Some shops try to re-shrink-wrap but luckily Nintendo has their own custom shrink-wrap and you can catch them in the act.
Unfortunately even if the government did something to stop them from selling unsealed game as new it wouldn't have much effect seeing how they're selling the latest used games at virtually the same price as their sealed counterparts. In fact, there was a particular DS game on shop.game.net that was more expensive if you bought it used as the new title was on sale. Clearly it was set up to lure people in and once the new versions ran out they get charged full priced for the used copies.
So this is why I buy all my games from Play.com.
CD jewel case games are even easier. You just pop the hinges and flip the lid upwards.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }