24 Aug, 2011
A friend of mine over at Giant Bomb, Alex Navarro, posted up a news story today, that has irritated the hell out of me, and we need to get more people up in arms about this. Apparently, the corporate offices have sent out a memo to all GameStop stores talking about the Deus Ex Human Revolution product and how it will be great for the store. But the first bullet point under that notice tells all store managers to immediately remove the free OnLive coupon from inside the box before selling or putting the boxes on the shelves.
The memo actually states that their desire is to make sure that these coupons are not available to the customer after the announcement. So, not only are they going to open my new game (definitely old news at this point), but they are also going to take away a benefit that is coming to me from the publisher. This goes beyond normal business practice, and moves into pure slime tactics. Way to go GameStop, you have just found another way to piss off the very people that you want to do business with – the consumers and the publishers.
And ArsTechnica has confirmed in another article with GameStop Management that this is an authentic memo and policy. I am hoping to get word from Square and OnLive on this latest crappy move by GameStop.
UPDATE 3:22 PDT – We contacted both Square Enix and OnLive about this disruption. Square Enix responded with, “We have no comment For now.”, while OnLive states, “The Company has no comment to add at this point.”
I have no words. Does WTF suffice?
This is absolutely outrageous. Now where am I going to get a nice shiny new copy of a game disc? I was already upset by the fact that my “new” game gets opened by employees and played before placing back in the box.
This is just f***ing retarded. Excuse my French.