GameStop Pulls PC Version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution

[Zakarath]

You know, if I was a gamestop manager, I'd probably just flip corporate the bird every time they came up with some moronic directive to give to me. They would wonder why my store was doing so well. Then they'd fire me.

 

[SyphonX]

I hate Gamestop.

Why would anyone want to buy from this company.

 

[SyphonX]

And the hate for Gamestop comes out once again even though the publisher pulled just as much as a dick move on Gamestop.

Hell yeah, go internet hate machine!

I'm sorry, but I don't understand this.

What kind of "dick move" did Square do, exactly? How is it different from Steamworks being required? Steam is probably the biggest competitor to Gamestop. Do they send all the Steamworks games back? No, they don't.

It would have been different if they sent the shipments back and requested a coupon-free retail shipment instead. However, what they did was just pillage the product that they sell directly to their customers, without their knowledge. I'm sorry, but that's quite a big dick move in comparison. Cracking the seal to a "new game" I just bought? That would piss me right off..

So once again, Gamestop exploits it's own customers because they had a hissy fit about money. Imagine that.

There are always tons of promotions given out with retail games, as already stated in this thread. Microsoft Points, Steam, etc.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Although I've never bought a single thing from Gamestop, I can understand why so many are pissed. At least they got the balls to do the right thing now, let's hope everyone learns from this mistake is all I can say.

 

[hanabichan]

I don't understand where Square Enix went wrong at all. It's their right to put whatever the heck they want in their product, including coupons for competing services with or without telling anyone. It's their product! No, it doesn't help Gamestop's streaming service, but Square Enix is under no obligation to be neutral toward all other companies.

Also, considering Gamestop's biggest money maker is damaging to game developers and publishers, they really shouldn't be upset when anyone partners with places other than them.

 

[RvLeshrac]

Sqeenix and OnLive are in the wrong here. If you're going to give away competing merchandise, let the people distributing it know. Now because of internet Gamestop hate, people can't get there copy of a game. Good job guys. Gamestop was in the right for this one. Hell, some of the stores gave the unopened copies out anyway, cause they care.

Yes, Coca-Cola should *CLEARLY* check with Pepsi every time they want to run a promotion, since they're sold in the same stores.

Companies which have direct-sale online shops clearly should be banned from printing their website on their products, too!

There is not a single moral, ethical, or legal principle which requires Square-Enix to consult with a *COMPLETELY UNRELATED THIRD-PARTY* every time they make a business decision.

Do you think publishers consult with Joe's Video Game Shop when they make a deal with Gamestop to offer preorder bonuses? Do you think Gamestop sees anything wrong with that?

 

[Beautiful End]

Wait a second, Gamestop sells PC games? Since when did this happen? Last I checked (which was admittedly about 2-3 years ago), Gamestop only sold console and handheld games.

Don't know if someone already answered this but here it goes (again, maybe):

SOME GameStops sell PC games, mostly the big stores (As in size, obviously). Their selection isn't that big, with only about a shelf of PC games and a very poor selection of games. New or popular titles are easy to find (Alice, WoW, AC: Brohood, Fable 3, etc.) but anything beyond that cannot be found there. But they do sell PC games, just like some GameStops still sell the original Xbox games.

 

[Beautiful End]

Sqeenix and OnLive are in the wrong here. If you're going to give away competing merchandise, let the people distributing it know. Now because of internet Gamestop hate, people can't get there copy of a game. Good job guys. Gamestop was in the right for this one. Hell, some of the stores gave the unopened copies out anyway, cause they care.

Yes, Coca-Cola should *CLEARLY* check with Pepsi every time they want to run a promotion, since they're sold in the same stores.

Companies which have direct-sale online shops clearly should be banned from printing their website on their products, too!

There is not a single moral, ethical, or legal principle which requires Square-Enix to consult with a *COMPLETELY UNRELATED THIRD-PARTY* every time they make a business decision.

Do you think publishers consult with Joe's Video Game Shop when they make a deal with Gamestop to offer preorder bonuses? Do you think Gamestop sees anything wrong with that?

Yes, but the problem is that it's as if GameStop had walked into Joe's store and handed out discount coupons to all of Joe's customers, right there at his store in front of him. Sure, those coupons were still being given away outside Joe's store and you could probably find them in today's newspaper issue. But still, the fact that GameStop did it right there in Joe's store in front of him is what makes the whole thing insulting.

 

[AgentBJ09]

Yes, Coca-Cola should *CLEARLY* check with Pepsi every time they want to run a promotion, since they're sold in the same stores.

I'll explain this before you get too far into the wrong ideas, because it's quite clear to me you don't understand businesses and how they operate when it comes to advertisements and promotions. The same can be said of most of the other people commenting here, Gamestop hatred notwithstanding.

By your logic, you think Square Enix is completely free of any wrongdoing by not telling the companies who buy their products ahead of time about promotions and freebies inside the item related to alternate services of delivery, even if they might conflict with another company. In this case, Gamestop and OnLive.

Best Buy doesn't stream game content, nor do Fry's or Amazon, even though they also sold the game. Gamestop is about to, so that free coupon for OnLive is something that may directly affect future sales if sold. If their sales could be threatened by packaged-in promotions, then they reserve the right to halt the sales of the product and remove the item in question to be replaced by copies which do not have that coupon.

Advertising discounts, sales on products, and bonus content downloads are fine to package in games because they usually do not directly compete with the businesses that sell the products with them. Now, once you talk about digital distribution of full games via stream, you enter the territory of directly competing sales between OnLive and Gamestop's new service. By Gamestop's sales of those OnLive coupons, they are deducting sales from their future service.

Put another way, that would be the same as me having a coupon for a free RPG rulebook from my competitor's hobby store in one of my new books, when I sell the same product in store. I would have the right to refuse and recall items with that promotion inside because it threatened my own sales, so why doesn't Gamestop?

And in any case, Square has said they respect Gamestop's right to pull the coupons because of what they have made public, and they did say they didn't inform anyone who bought the game for retail sale about this. Gamestop's just the unlucky target of this since they actually will have a similar service to OnLive soon.

Matter of fact, they could in fairness do the same with free full game Steam promotions since they own Impulse, which competes with them on that front. And you know what? As a business, they have every right to do so.

 

[Gizen]

Yet another in a long line of extremely sleazy, questionably-legal business moves by Gamestop. I work at a Gamestop, and not a single employee in the store, including the manager, believed this was even legal to do, let alone thought for a second that Gamestop was in the right.

For the record, anyone who hates Gamestop and wants to hurt their business, but don't necessarily have any better options for buying games, there are a number of things you can do which negatively impact them while still buying things from them.

Never buy gameplay guarantees, GPGs, warranties, whatever the employees of that particular store choose to call them. It's usually a 2-3$ additional cost.

Never let them carry out a transaction for more than one item at a time.

Do your best to buy new games. Always at least ask what the price of the new game is. The price difference is rarely more than 5$, frequently it's only even a 2$ difference between new and used. As an example, a brand new copy of Dead Space 2 is sold for 40$, a used copy is sold for 38$, take into account that Dead Space 2 has a one time use only code to access online play, which is sold separately for 5-10$, and it quickly becomes apparent that buying used is actually more expensive. Hell, we currently sell Midnight Club: LA the Complete Edition for 20$ brand new, and we sell the regular version without any of the extra content or DLC used for 28$. Even if you want to save a few bucks on used, always at least ask the price on new, and make sure that used is actually saving you money, not costing you it.

Those are the things that you can do while shopping at Gamestop to hurt their business without hurting yourself. Other things that seriously impact their numbers (but can come at some cost to yourself) include never buying edge cards, pre-orders, or any accessory branded PDP. Not doing those hurts Gamestop hard as well, but can tend to have a larger impact on your wallet/ability to acquire games then the previously mentioned ones do.

 

[Gizen]

Advertising discounts, sales on products, and bonus content downloads are fine to package in games because they usually do not directly compete with the businesses that sell the products with them. Now, once you talk about digital distribution of full games via stream, you enter the territory of directly competing sales between OnLive and Gamestop's new service. By Gamestop's sales of those OnLive coupons, they are deducting sales from their future service.

Put another way, that would be the same as me having a coupon for a free RPG rulebook from my competitor's hobby store in one of my new books, when I sell the same product in store. I would have the right to refuse and recall items with that promotion inside because it threatened my own sales, so why doesn't Gamestop?

Except in order to get that coupon for a free rulebook from a competitor's store, I'd first have to pay full price to obtain the same rulebook from YOUR store. All those coupons that Gamestop was pulling out, for the customers to get them, they'd first have to have already bought the game from Gamestop, which means they've still gotten the money for it already. On top of that, since the coupon is to get the game for free, OnLive isn't even actually making any money from the coupon in and of itself (at least that I'm aware of, unless OnLive has a subscription or something that I'm not aware of). Furthermore, Gamestop doesn't have a competing business with OnLive YET, and I'm willing to bet that they didn't at the time that Square-Enix negotiated this deal with OnLive, since Gamestop's acquisition was a relatively recent thing. If anything, this will make Gamestop lose money, because even if they're given versions of the game without a coupon to sell now, why would anyone buy from them when you can go to the Wal-Mart next door and get two games for the price of one? Not to mention Gamestop is already having issues with people getting fed up with being sold tampered goods as brand new, and this does not help that image.

I wouldn't necessarily say that Square-Enix is completely 100% in the right, but Gamestop is definitely in the wrong, and by a much larger amount.

 

[AgentBJ09]

Except in order to get that coupon for a free rulebook from a competitor's store, I'd first have to pay full price to obtain the same rulebook from YOUR store. All those coupons that Gamestop was pulling out, for the customers to get them, they'd first have to have already bought the game from Gamestop, which means they've still gotten the money for it already. On top of that, since the coupon is to get the game for free, OnLive isn't even actually making any money from the coupon in and of itself (at least that I'm aware of, unless OnLive has a subscription or something that I'm not aware of).

Furthermore, Gamestop doesn't have a competing business with OnLive YET, and I'm willing to bet that they didn't at the time that Square-Enix negotiated this deal with OnLive, since Gamestop's acquisition was a relatively recent thing. If anything, this will make Gamestop lose money, because even if they're given versions of the game without a coupon to sell now, why would anyone buy from them when you can go to the Wal-Mart next door and get two games for the price of one? Not to mention Gamestop is already having issues with people getting fed up with being sold tampered goods as brand new, and this does not help that image.

I wouldn't necessarily say that Square-Enix is completely 100% in the right, but Gamestop is definitely in the wrong, and by a much larger amount.

You're missing the point, on both fronts.

For one, the Gamestop digital dist. Deus Ex is a purchase, just like the one OnLive offers. What the coupon does is potentially draw sales away from the Gamestop service and towards their competitor, for Deus Ex as much as any other games the two share. Now, is that something you would promote in your own store? I sure wouldn't.

That RPG book example I mentioned? What if that customer buys more books from my competitor and not from me because of that promotion? I would have lost money by promoting their business in my store, and no entrepreneur would even dream of making that mistake.

Second, a promotion for a service that competes with others should be brought to the attention of all who buy the game for retail distribution. From there, the publisher should decide, "OK, who has given me the go ahead to give them these copies with the free game voucher?"

That's how things should have been done, but SE didn't bother doing it. As such, Gamestop is exercising it's right to remove promotions for a competitor since they were never informed about it before purchasing the copies.

And on that note, if the coupon copy is free anyway, what did you really lose? The promotion is for both OnLive TV/PC, so what did you really lose if your PC can play the game anyway? Unless you were you really going to buy the OnLive TV set-up for 99.99 and play Deus Ex on something besides your PC, which could run the game anyway.

https://www.onlive.com/store/order - For the sake of proof.

 

[Invariel]

"As part of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's boxed offering on PC, Square Enix included a third party coupon. 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," the statement said.

That is a VERY dangerous statement. No publisher should be okay with the distributor choosing what parts of the product to sell in a boxed package.

 

[Kenji_03]

I only preorder a 360 game from Game Stop from time to time, and only because of the special offers like Gears 3 Beta.

Otherwise, I buy all my games elsewhere (AKA: Walmart & Steam)

I agree that if at all possible, buy anywhere BUT Game Stop.

 

[robert01]

Except in order to get that coupon for a free rulebook from a competitor's store, I'd first have to pay full price to obtain the same rulebook from YOUR store. All those coupons that Gamestop was pulling out, for the customers to get them, they'd first have to have already bought the game from Gamestop, which means they've still gotten the money for it already. On top of that, since the coupon is to get the game for free, OnLive isn't even actually making any money from the coupon in and of itself (at least that I'm aware of, unless OnLive has a subscription or something that I'm not aware of).

Furthermore, Gamestop doesn't have a competing business with OnLive YET, and I'm willing to bet that they didn't at the time that Square-Enix negotiated this deal with OnLive, since Gamestop's acquisition was a relatively recent thing. If anything, this will make Gamestop lose money, because even if they're given versions of the game without a coupon to sell now, why would anyone buy from them when you can go to the Wal-Mart next door and get two games for the price of one? Not to mention Gamestop is already having issues with people getting fed up with being sold tampered goods as brand new, and this does not help that image.

I wouldn't necessarily say that Square-Enix is completely 100% in the right, but Gamestop is definitely in the wrong, and by a much larger amount.

You're missing the point, on both fronts.

For one, the Gamestop digital dist. Deus Ex is a purchase, just like the one OnLive offers. What the coupon does is potentially draw sales away from the Gamestop service and towards their competitor, for Deus Ex as much as any other games the two share. Now, is that something you would promote in your own store? I sure wouldn't.

That RPG book example I mentioned? What if that customer buys more books from my competitor and not from me because of that promotion? I would have lost money by promoting their business in my store, and no entrepreneur would even dream of making that mistake.

Second, a promotion for a service that competes with others should be brought to the attention of all who buy the game for retail distribution. From there, the publisher should decide, "OK, who has given me the go ahead to give them these copies with the free game voucher?"

That's how things should have been done, but SE didn't bother doing it. As such, Gamestop is exercising it's right to remove promotions for a competitor since they were never informed about it before purchasing the copies.

And on that note, if the coupon copy is free anyway, what did you really lose? The promotion is for both OnLive TV/PC, so what did you really lose if your PC can play the game anyway? Unless you were you really going to buy the OnLive TV set-up for 99.99 and play Deus Ex on something besides your PC, which could run the game anyway.

https://www.onlive.com/store/order - For the sake of proof.

And what GameStop did is still wrong. Clearly they are afraid of competition.
Square Enix doesn't have to OK any promotions they do with stores.
Clearly your understanding of marketing is a little off.

GameStop cannot open an item, remove something from inside it, and than claim it is a new sale. They only have two options, deal with the promotion and PROVE to people why their service is better than the competitors, or not sell the product. Which they opted to do once it got out that they were removing the coupons.

Do you think a major video retailer is going to open movies and remove coupons for something at Wal-Mart that they sell? Probably not.

 

[Strazdas]

WW3 will be fought in onlien gaming platforms it seems. Steam VS EA, Game Stop vs Deus Ex, battle.net is also gearing up for battle, whats next?

 

[Le_Lisra]

But who buys at Gamestop anyway..

Millions of people.

Well, enough to make 1.9 billion in sales* last year. Maybe just hundreds of thousands of people.

I'm aware of that.. it just puzzles me. I guess where I come from they aren't in that much of a dominant market position so there are more alternatives.

I either ship games in from amazon or buy at one of the mega stores owened by the Metro Group. Sure, you can't trade in, but I like to keep my games anyway..

 

[Yopaz]

.... It's a steamworks title.... at no point can you not have it on a competing digital service. Wonder what's going to happen to Skyrim now.

Steam isn't a streaming service (yet)...

But Steam is in competition with GameStop's download service.

And it's not like GameStop actually has a cloud gaming service up and running, or is promising to offer Deus Ex: Human Revolution on it once it goes live.

I don't think Gamestop minds selling a game which requires Steam, as long as people actually buy the game in a Gamestop... But the blatant advertising of a (soon-to-be) competing service in a product they sell? I can sorta understand where they're coming from

But once someone buys a Steamworks game and is forced to install and register for Steam, they'll naturally be more inclined to buy games on Steam rather than on GameStop in the future.

It's the same thing as for OnLive. They register for the service to get their free copy of Deus Ex, and then they start investing money in other games.

And yet I have seen GameStop selling CS. The very game Steam was made for.

What I want to ask is. How is this anything different from publishers "removing" content from games they make?
There's been a lot of argument over games like Rage for having extra content for those who buy new that others have to buy separately. Now GameStop does it and everyone seems to be on GameStop's side. And GameStop is actually physically removing something.

 

[Griffolion]

So basically, the tl;dr of this is, Gamestop are being dicks. There's a surprise.

 

[Arawn.Chernobog]

Oh, Gamestop's throwing a hissy-fit?

Back to enjoying Digital Distribution for me.