Bad form, Gamestop. Bad form.

Gamestop tends to catch flack from developers saying that they undermine the business of video games with used sales.  They catch flack from customers because of the low price they pay for almost new games (that they mark up sky high).  Now they’ll catch flack from me for STEALING things from brand new games.

The recent release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution had a little present inside for its first batch of customers; a coupon to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution on the up and coming online gaming service OnLive (the game costs $50 to play on the service).  After going to their local Gamestop stores to pickup their copy of the game, customers started to notice something odd; there was no coupon in the copies that Gamestop was selling.

Could this be a mess up?  I wish.  Gamestop employees were given instructions from higher up in the company to open the game boxes, remove and discard the coupon, and put the games back on the shelf as new merchandise.

After Gamespy acquired an email regarding the issue and made it public, Gamestop was sure to update their Facebook page with a “valid” reason for the trespass:

Regarding the Deus Ex OnLive Codes: GameStop’s policy is that we do not promote competitive services without a formal partnership.
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.
While the new products may be opened, we fully guarantee the condition of the discs to be new. If you find this to not be the case, please contact the store where the game was purchased and they will further assist.

This is shady by any standards and if a customer would have bought the game and returned it without a coupon worth $50 Gamestop would laugh in their face and send them out the door.  If you want to work out a deal for special “no coupon” copies of the game that might make people mad, but at least they would know what they were buying.

 

 

 

About Jesse (The Pen of Doom)

A small time blogger with big time dreams and a love for everything geek.
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