Digital distribution is coming, whether GameStop like it or not. Removing the free codes for OnLive is not going to stem the tide.
For proprietary media like Playstation, XBox, etc they're going to be disintermediated whether they like it or not. They still can win in the PC arena.
So rather than acquiring strategically pointless startups like casual gaming site Kongregate, they'd be wise to ramp up their efforts to compete with Steam or even acquire whole digital distribution + consumption stacks like OnLive itself.
Competing with Steam is more a relationship challenge than a technical one, and of all companies GameStop is well placed with those existing relationships.
The downfall of Blockbuster should have proved that they need to change a long time ago.
I've not met a gamer who is a raving fan of GameStop. they seem to either hate them, or not hate them yet.
They do have a lot of names and numbers, but you rarely see anything remotely like the "i <3 steam" or "i quit pirating games because steam does it right" abject love that valve gets.
I have serious doubts GameStop's corporate culture can accept gamers as anything other than something to extract dollars from, much less accept lower revenue and lower expenses.
So rather than acquiring strategically pointless startups like casual gaming site Kongregate, they'd be wise to ramp up their efforts to compete with Steam or even acquire whole digital distribution + consumption stacks like OnLive itself.
Competing with Steam is more a relationship challenge than a technical one, and of all companies GameStop is well placed with those existing relationships.
I think the PC gaming market's relationship with GameStop can be described as "disgusted." Lots of PC gamers dislike GameStop (rockpapershotgun.com and pcgamer.com and their forums as prime examples of how people feel about them). Exclusive pre-order bonuses, cruddy behavior like this, ect.
I spent several years of my life at GameStop, and I miss it.
I was hired long before the EB/GameStop merger and watched as the company adopted EB's culture. GameStop was a bottom-up company, and EB was a top-down company. Much more authoritarian in its management, and saw the customer more like a piece of meat.
In the years just after the merger, I watched morale fall as the "scratch protection" plans became a priority, trade prices plummeted, and we stopped stocking PC games in several stores. They replaced GameStop's functional, DOS-based POS and adopted EB's slow, windows version. The transition was terrible, and the company seemed deaf to the complaints that holiday lines were getting longer and longer as they added features to an already slow and bloated system.
I quit and returned to school a couple years after the merger, it was the right decision, of course.
I loved my time at GameStop. I built a community around the store I managed and did everything I could to do right by the customer. I knew several managers (on both sides) who were as dedicated as I was to this goal. The culture at corporate was focused on marketing and was in no way supportive of this goal, and I'm saddened to see what they've become. But it was probably inevitable.
The comments here are pretty disdainful, and I definitely understand why. But there are a lot of good people working in the trenches that deserve thanks for what they've done for their customers.
I'd like to say that I'm amazed that GameStop would steal from their customers, but they haven't been the bastions of honesty that I'd like to think they were.
So no, I'm not amazed.
If they were honest, they'd either send the boxes back to the manufacturer and ask for ones that didn't have the codes, or leave them intact. Stealing something out of the box, then wrapping it up like it's new and selling it... That's just dishonest.
Is this even their prerogative? Presumably, Square Enix would have partnered directly with OnLive and made some contractual arrangement to include the promotion in their product packaging. I'm certainly not a lawyer, but I can't imagine this being within GameStop's rights.
I'll use this story next time I explain net neutrality to anyone. "Think what GameStop is doing is bad? Imagine your ISP engaging in similar practices."
Indeed, if you haven't tried it yet then you absolutely should. I highly recommend Just Cause 2, it's a huge game and it plays perfectly. You can play any game for 30 minutes without spending a penny.
It's not officially available in the UK yet, but I've managed to get on anyway. Even with the huge distance involved, the latency was still low enough to play Darksiders, which looked pretty impressive on a netbook!
It works really well, just check your bandwidth. I spent most of last Saturday playing OnLive and watching Netflix and between them it chewed up 8 gigs of data. I've got a fairly generous cap though so I'm not worried.
GameStop's lack of scruples: not surprising.
GameStop fears OnLive as a substantial threat: a little surprising. Internet speeds for the majority of Americans are just way too slow for OnLive to be viable.
> For now, if you absolutely must buy the game from a GameStop location, either make sure the game is sealed, or check for the coupon before leaving the location.
I used to work at one in HS. It's really easy to reseal a package with shrink wrap.
Me too! The heat gun shrink wrap is cool stuff, but it's obviously not the factory-fresh stuff (nicely folded cellophane gift wrap) to anyone who's purchased a new game in the last few years. Plus, there's also a box seal inside the wrap anyways.
This is the same company that will buy used games for $2 and sell them for MSRP minus $3 or so, then try to sell "scratch insurance" as an attachment.
I don't play a lot of games, but every time I do pick one up (since GameStop is virtually the only remaining B&M game store in many places), it hasn't been a consumer-friendly experience.
In my area, GameStop is the only place that has a wide selection of used games on the cheap. Some times its nice to blow $100 on video games and end up with 5 titles rather 2.
I will admit I would never buy a new game from GameStop. One time when I wanted to purchase PES 2011 they tried to sell me a brand new game with the packaging teared off. This disturbed me quite a bit. When I tried to explain to the manager it was the same thing as a used game to me at that point he didn't accept my argument. I bet they do this more than it gets reported.
Amazon works pretty well for this now, and the catalog is far deeper than any Gamestop's. It's even easy to sell your own stuff there through a variety of mechanisms.
I'm not surprised that this doesn't surprise anyone. So many fall victim to unethical practices from Gamestop, the worst I think being selling used re-shrink-wrapped games as New.
In other news, digital distribution to me makes sense i.e. Steam, and full downloads direct to console HD and the like, but it just isn't a large enough market share yet IMO. These games are humongous it's kind of pain to keep running out of disk space, at least as things stand currently.
I'm a bit confused. When is hard drive space a problem? With digital distribution, you can redownload at whim, and with discs, you can reinstall at (slightly less convenient) whim.
Can Square Enix sue GameStop for trademark infringement or something? Opening trademarked boxes and removing things that the customer is presumably paying for, without notifying the customer, sounds illegal to me. If you did the same with boxes of Legos, what would the result be?
[+] [-] dotBen|14 years ago|reply
For proprietary media like Playstation, XBox, etc they're going to be disintermediated whether they like it or not. They still can win in the PC arena.
So rather than acquiring strategically pointless startups like casual gaming site Kongregate, they'd be wise to ramp up their efforts to compete with Steam or even acquire whole digital distribution + consumption stacks like OnLive itself.
Competing with Steam is more a relationship challenge than a technical one, and of all companies GameStop is well placed with those existing relationships.
The downfall of Blockbuster should have proved that they need to change a long time ago.
[+] [-] jfoutz|14 years ago|reply
They do have a lot of names and numbers, but you rarely see anything remotely like the "i <3 steam" or "i quit pirating games because steam does it right" abject love that valve gets.
I have serious doubts GameStop's corporate culture can accept gamers as anything other than something to extract dollars from, much less accept lower revenue and lower expenses.
[+] [-] anurag|14 years ago|reply
They've already acquired companies to directly compete with both OnLive and Steam: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/01/gamestop-details-plans-fo...
[+] [-] jergason|14 years ago|reply
I think the PC gaming market's relationship with GameStop can be described as "disgusted." Lots of PC gamers dislike GameStop (rockpapershotgun.com and pcgamer.com and their forums as prime examples of how people feel about them). Exclusive pre-order bonuses, cruddy behavior like this, ect.
[+] [-] ido|14 years ago|reply
Hardly a startup.
[+] [-] chaostheory|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zinkem|14 years ago|reply
I was hired long before the EB/GameStop merger and watched as the company adopted EB's culture. GameStop was a bottom-up company, and EB was a top-down company. Much more authoritarian in its management, and saw the customer more like a piece of meat.
In the years just after the merger, I watched morale fall as the "scratch protection" plans became a priority, trade prices plummeted, and we stopped stocking PC games in several stores. They replaced GameStop's functional, DOS-based POS and adopted EB's slow, windows version. The transition was terrible, and the company seemed deaf to the complaints that holiday lines were getting longer and longer as they added features to an already slow and bloated system.
I quit and returned to school a couple years after the merger, it was the right decision, of course.
I loved my time at GameStop. I built a community around the store I managed and did everything I could to do right by the customer. I knew several managers (on both sides) who were as dedicated as I was to this goal. The culture at corporate was focused on marketing and was in no way supportive of this goal, and I'm saddened to see what they've become. But it was probably inevitable.
The comments here are pretty disdainful, and I definitely understand why. But there are a lot of good people working in the trenches that deserve thanks for what they've done for their customers.
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
So no, I'm not amazed.
If they were honest, they'd either send the boxes back to the manufacturer and ask for ones that didn't have the codes, or leave them intact. Stealing something out of the box, then wrapping it up like it's new and selling it... That's just dishonest.
[+] [-] kodablah|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yock|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mortenjorck|14 years ago|reply
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/08/gamestop-onlive/
[+] [-] adelevie|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srbloom|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sad|14 years ago|reply
Disclaimer: I wish I was an investor.
[+] [-] ZoFreX|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teamonkey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vectorpush|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tatsuke95|14 years ago|reply
It (or something like it) is the future, there's no doubt about that.
[+] [-] chaostheory|14 years ago|reply
I used to work at one in HS. It's really easy to reseal a package with shrink wrap.
[+] [-] nlawalker|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawnchair_larry|14 years ago|reply
I don't play a lot of games, but every time I do pick one up (since GameStop is virtually the only remaining B&M game store in many places), it hasn't been a consumer-friendly experience.
[+] [-] rickdale|14 years ago|reply
I will admit I would never buy a new game from GameStop. One time when I wanted to purchase PES 2011 they tried to sell me a brand new game with the packaging teared off. This disturbed me quite a bit. When I tried to explain to the manager it was the same thing as a used game to me at that point he didn't accept my argument. I bet they do this more than it gets reported.
[+] [-] jerf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kin|14 years ago|reply
In other news, digital distribution to me makes sense i.e. Steam, and full downloads direct to console HD and the like, but it just isn't a large enough market share yet IMO. These games are humongous it's kind of pain to keep running out of disk space, at least as things stand currently.
[+] [-] Ralith|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathos|14 years ago|reply
Removing the OnLive coupon may hide one (small) competitor, but does nothing to stop GameStop's real competition in the PC space.
[+] [-] dismalist|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JMiao|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kragen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmc|14 years ago|reply