[Update]
Square Enix issued an apology yesterday, but not to purchasers of Deus Ex: Human Revolution… To GameStop.
“As part of Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s boxed offering on PC, Square Enix included a third party coupon,” said the company in a statement. “GameStop was not made aware of this inclusion and Square Enix respects the right of GameStop to have final say over the contents of products it sells and to adjust them where they see fit in accordance with their policies.” “Square Enix invites gamers who want to purchase the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution without additional coupons to buy the game at any one of over 4000 GameStop stores in North America,” continued the statement, “or purchase a digital download copy online from www.gamestop.com. “
Seems a bit weird that they are apologizing to GameStop, but maybe they see this as the only way to keep their games being carried in the store.
[Original Story] A flurry, or rather a firestorm has been unleashed today. More than the usual smack talk against GameStop and their shady business practices, they may have just taken this a bit too far.
Anyone that has been dealing in games for more than a couple years can tell you that brick and mortar stores are always competing to get you in the door to give them money for games. Usually the best way is to get them to offer pre-order bonuses to consumers. Gamestop is no stranger to doing this. So it seems a bit of a step backwards with GameStops recent actions.
Tuesday saw the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution from Square Enix and Eidos. Human Revolution has been pretty well received critically, and most of the “regular folk” out there seem to be enjoying it as well so far. GameStop received their PC shipment like everyone else, but customers were surprised to find something missing in their box when they got home. What should have been there was a coupon from OnLive (a sort of netflix streaming for games) that gave them FREE access to the game on their service. Basically it was two PC games for the price of one. The thing is, GameStop doesn’t like it.
GameStop is in the process of beta testing a service not unlike OnLive. To give the consumer a free game that they will likely sell on their own service is, well, just not good business practice. The official statement from GameStop is as follows.
“We pulled the coupons because, like all retailers, we prefer not to promote our competitors and their competing offerings and services in our stores. Unfortunately, the coupon was packed without our prior knowledge.”
So rather than pulling the game completely and not selling it, GameStop chose to send a direct order from headquarters to open the cases, remove the coupon, and sell as new. Essentially they are stealing from their customers. You can say all day that, yeah that makes good business sense, and in a way I guess it does. However, there are far better ways of handling the situation than taking the pack-in from an unsuspecting customer.
My biggest issue with this is that Portal 2 did pretty much the same thing. When Portal 2 for PS3 was sold in stores (GameStop included) it had a pack-in coupon for a free voucher for Portal 2 on Steam. The difference (I guess) is that GameStop knew that this was going on. So, again I guess, that is why they didn’t take it out. My question then becomes: Had GameStop had prior knowledge of the OnLive coupon, what would they have done? Would they have taken it out as well? Would they have not sold it?
No matter how you look at this, it is going to be a PR nightmare for GameStop for a while. It’s just hard to believe that a store is actively fighting migration from a physical medium to a digital one by stealing from the consumers. I understand that it’s bad business to send someone to the competitor, but again, there are other ways of handling this situation.
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