GameStop Pulls PC Version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution

[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.

 

[No_Remainders]

I wonder if they did that in Ireland...

Oh well, I'm getting it from GAME instead of GameStop... And on 360, anyway.

 

[No_Remainders]

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.

It's because GameStop actually have a fair point here.
GS are going to be releasing a service to stream games, like OnLive does at the moment, so they're removing advertising for a soon-to-be competing service.

They didn't go about it well, but still, they have an argument.

 

[rsvp42]

I usually play devil's advocate with this kind of stuff, but I'm not doing that this time. This just sucks. They should have just returned the boxes unopened and taken a hit. I like GameStop well enough, but there always seems to be some problem with them, whether it's little things like closing at 8 and preventing me from picking up a preorder, medium things like delaying the release of time-senstive preorder codes for SW:TOR or big things like this, there's always something. Oh well, I was thinking of picking this up, so if I decide to go with PC instead of Xbox, i'll avoid them this time.

 

[JediMB]

.... 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.

Well, personally I'll never be on GameStop's side as long as they keep running their business as they do now.

And at the end of the day all video game distribution services - be they physical stores, online retailers, digital distribution services, or cloud gaming services - are in competition with each other, and you don't see any other stores removing OnLive coupons from the game cases.

Although... I do recall there being a bunch of British retailers threatening to stop stocking Steamworks games because they felt threatened by Steam. (And recently there was news of games getting delayed releases on Steam in the UK.)

 

[oathblade]

I wandered through the local Gamestop 3 days ago. Window shopping and price checking. Planning what to buy and..wait that did what?

Thanks Gamestop I almost forgot what kind of jerks you were. Great save, Ill make sure to spend my money elsewhere.

 

[TheDoctor455]

Morons. They didn't stop to think about the possible bad PR this would cause did they?

All Gamestop is accomplishing with this is driving possible customers AWAY from their services.

 

[andy25100]

Gamestop is trying to stop people from buying deus ex by not letting them buy it from them, forgetting all the other shops selling the game with the coupon, they lost the moment they started this debacle.

 

[jovack22]

People, stop spending money at gamestop. Plain and simple. There are many more stores that sell video games that aren't so crooked.

I've RARELY had a good experience at Gamestop, and I personally boycotted the store (it's been 2 or so years).

 

[Yopaz]

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.

It's because GameStop actually have a fair point here.
GS are going to be releasing a service to stream games, like OnLive does at the moment, so they're removing advertising for a soon-to-be competing service.

They didn't go about it well, but still, they have an argument.

So when game developers want to compete with their biggest loss in income that's a terrible thing, but when GameStop wants to do the same it's all OK?

There's been a lot of rage around Rage because an area in the game featuring sewers was given as free dlc for those who bought it new. This could be bought independently if you bought the game used.

Now EA includes something that competes with GameStop and everyone is on GameStop's side, saying that's understandable because it will mean GameStop loses income. Now why is there such a fury around a case where the creator of a game wants to secure at least some money and gives exclusive content when a retailer (which has NOT made any games) actually removes something the publisher gives you?

I just can't see the difference. Please, tell me the difference between:
1: Game developer "removes" content to get ahead in the competition
2: GameStop removes content to get ahead in the competition

 

[No_Remainders]

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.

It's because GameStop actually have a fair point here.
GS are going to be releasing a service to stream games, like OnLive does at the moment, so they're removing advertising for a soon-to-be competing service.

They didn't go about it well, but still, they have an argument.

So when game developers want to compete with their biggest loss in income that's a terrible thing, but when GameStop wants to do the same it's all OK?

There's been a lot of rage around Rage because an area in the game featuring sewers was given as free dlc for those who bought it new. This could be bought independently if you bought the game used.

Now EA includes something that competes with GameStop and everyone is on GameStop's side, saying that's understandable because it will mean GameStop loses income. Now why is there such a fury around a case where the creator of a game wants to secure at least some money and gives exclusive content when a retailer (which has NOT made any games) actually removes something the publisher gives you?

I just can't see the difference. Please, tell me the difference between:
1: Game developer "removes" content to get ahead in the competition
2: GameStop removes content to get ahead in the competition

I'm actually all in favour of preventing people who buy second hand to play some content. I think it's a pretty good idea.

And Square Enix included it, not EA.

Shrug. I buy first hand almost exclusively, unless it's a game that I just wasn't bothered getting when it was first released and therefore can't find a new copy.

 

[Yopaz]

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.

It's because GameStop actually have a fair point here.
GS are going to be releasing a service to stream games, like OnLive does at the moment, so they're removing advertising for a soon-to-be competing service.

They didn't go about it well, but still, they have an argument.

So when game developers want to compete with their biggest loss in income that's a terrible thing, but when GameStop wants to do the same it's all OK?

There's been a lot of rage around Rage because an area in the game featuring sewers was given as free dlc for those who bought it new. This could be bought independently if you bought the game used.

Now EA includes something that competes with GameStop and everyone is on GameStop's side, saying that's understandable because it will mean GameStop loses income. Now why is there such a fury around a case where the creator of a game wants to secure at least some money and gives exclusive content when a retailer (which has NOT made any games) actually removes something the publisher gives you?

I just can't see the difference. Please, tell me the difference between:
1: Game developer "removes" content to get ahead in the competition
2: GameStop removes content to get ahead in the competition

I'm actually all in favour of preventing people who buy second hand to play some content. I think it's a pretty good idea.

And Square Enix included it, not EA.

Shrug. I buy first hand almost exclusively, unless it's a game that I just wasn't bothered getting when it was first released and therefore can't find a new copy.

OK, so I'll admit I don't know who's actually publishing the game, but you said GameStop had a fair point without answering how GameStop can cause losses to publishers and developers and almost no-one has a problem with it, but hate it when publishers do the same to GameStop?

 

[warfjm]

If I really want the coupon, I'll just go to Walmart and not Gamestop. And this isn't the only shady stuff that Gamestop does either.