Hoo boy, we hope the Canadians have a robust Consumer Protection Act to complain to when the latest policies from gaming shops EB Games and Gamestop are implemented. According to some leaked memos and with backup from employees working at the respective shops, the separation of used and new games will be done away with completely.
And it seems that the shops are going to be doing their best to make certain that customers don’t find out that they’re buying a used copy of whatever title is available, as employees have been instructed to hide new games behind old ones.
Normally, second-hand titles are labelled with a yellow sticker in order to identify their “pre-owned” state, but this will soon be ditched for a universal white label. One Canadian Gamestop employee confirmed with Kotaku the following information;
I can confirm this 100% we were given instructions last week to start this. We were told that we were to merge all used games with the new games and have them sectioned off by one of four specific genres they gave us. They told us that the new copy must be on the very bottom of the pile and the used ones stacked on top and that we were to change
all price stickers to the white ones. They also instructed us to discard all materials advertising used games. Now the stickers do have the words NEW or USED on them but no one looks at that.HUGE problems with this will of course be with the online code games. Generic_Customer_01 will grab the top copy of NHL 12, go home, and not be able to play online. There are also MANY games where the new copy is as cheap as $19.99 but the used copies stacked on top of it are $34.99. It is also a nightmare to find anything anymore and the
opinion of what games fall in what categories was different even across staff members in the same store.Instead, according to internal documentation forwarded to Kotaku, all games will be lumped into the one section, and all games will be stickered with the same white price tags (pre-owned games previously had their own distinctive yellow stickers in Canada, something I understand US stores did away with a while back).
Gamestop and EB Games have yet to comment on the matter, but if this is their way of making a quick buck before the Christmas time rushes, it is absolutely shameful. T
This isn’t the first time that Gamestop has been in the news for shoddy business practices either, as their methods of dealing with bundled OnLive codes for Deus Ex Human Revolution this year caught the public spotlight, requiring some hasty damage control in the process.
Last Updated: November 24, 2011
