Gamestop Admits to Directing Employees to Open New Boxes & Remove OnLive Coupon
Gamestop has admitted to directing its employees to removing Deus Ex: Human Revolution OnLive coupons from the game, reseal them, and sell them as new. Gamestop’s reasoning was that Square Enix put a competitor’s coupon inside the game without informing them. Now, I can understand if they at least informed the customers – but doing it in the backroom of the store is pretty lame.
This shady practice is already starting to blow up online – which has had the opposite effect that Gamestop wanted and is giving plenty of publicity to OnLive.
Gamestop addressed the matter on Facebook:
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.
What Gamestop should do to address the matter is put the info on display in their stores and offer a refund for the games that were purchased when the signs weren’t present. I totally understand their need to not have competitors being advertised in a game box they sell – but don’t remove the item without some level of informing the customer.
Source:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/24/screw-you-gamestop/
