Gamertell

Once again we find the subject being our most love-to-hate video game retail giant, GameStop, at the center of another consumer foul. This time the illegal kind.

Kotaku took it upon themselves to claim what thousands of consumers have already claimed, that selling employee “checked out” games as new is illegal. However, Kotaku, rather than whine on a forum, point blank asked the Federal Trade Commission where the legality of this practice stood among the FTC’s rules and guidelines.

How did the FTC respond? How did you think they were going to respond? With a generic “no comment” statement. And who could blame them? What you are asking the FTC to comment on is something of conjecture. Yes, we consumers know that certain GameStop retail stores do have employees that “check out” un-played games but to make a case of this you have to have physical evidence that such an action took place.

The cloak of this problem is that employees cannot check out sealed games. When a new game is released, employees have to “gut” a certain number of copies of that game in order to display the box of the shelf letting the consumer know that the title is in stock at the store. Gutting requires the employee to open the shrink wrap, slice through the security stickers, remove the disc from the case, slide the disc into a CD sleeve and, finally, place the box on the shelf and the sleeve in the main storage case. It‘s something I had to do for three years and it was the bane of my existence every time a new game was released.

Plenty of former employees have anonymously talked (via the web) about their stores taking gutted games and checking them out of the store. So will witness testimonies count? Maybe, but chances are that a finely-tuned lawyer would try to twist the account as a being ranting from an disgruntled worker and should not be taken as the sole truth. It’s a sick tactic but one of the more popular tactics.

Besides obtaining physical, non-twistable evidence, we also have to consider that checking out new or un-played copies of games is not GameStop’s official policy. On page 30 of the GameStop Store Associate handbook, it states:

“Associates are allowed to check out selected store merchandise for personal use for a limited period of time. Merchandise checkout is a privilege, not a right, and may be revoked at any time. Hardware, accessories, sealed CDs or software programs that must be altered to install may not be checkout out.”

The word we are looking for in that statement is “selected.” It’s a poorly thought out, loose term that, if brought up to an commission official, would certainly raise eyebrows. The statement doesn’t outright say that employees are allowed to check out new merchandise and you can bet that’s the defense that will be used by the company. It also doesn’t say they can’t but the fact that it doesn’t say they can would probably overrule this minor detail.

Most stores I’ve been to have explicitly stated that employees are not allowed to check out new merchandise. Of course, they may be lying but, again, we’d need proof. The store I worked at for three years never let us check out new games.

I’m not trying to defend GameStop by any means. I do think that getting the FTC’s input on the practice is interesting but it has a slim chance of ever amounting to anything, though I suppose a slim chance is better than no chance for those who want to damage the evil empire.

A more feasible approach, other than shopping elsewhere, would be to raise Cain about GameStop’s practice of gutting games period. Something along the lines of the practice having negative effects on consumer purchasing confidence. We know why GameStop guts games: to avoid massive theft and to display in-stock titles. But there are different solutions to solve those problems and retain game copies in their shrink wrap. 

The one my old manager thought of was to use the Toy’s ‘R‘ Us method of using display slips. Consumers would see the slip as having the game in stock and then could go to the counter to purchase the new title in its shrink wrap and security stickers. Publishers could also pitch in and supply inserts for stock display boxes or maybe GameStop could reimburse employees that want to take the initiative and print the inserts themselves.

Solutions exist and why GameStop or the publishers won’t step in is beyond me. I guess we as gamers are going to have to stop worrying about flaming fanboys and start worrying about banding together to fix a lousy retail policy that none of us seem to agree with. Start petitions, make signs, cry “no blood for guts!” if you have to, but lets do something people, because change doesn’t come by arguing on a forum.

It’s worth pointing out that after I wrote this post, Law of the Game put up some thoughts on the subject as well that well worth the read and pretty much come up with the same point I did: Why doesn’t GameStop move past the gutting of games?

Read [Kotaku” title=“Kotaku” target=“external”>Kotaku] Also Read [Law of the Game” title=“Law of the Game” target=“external”>Law of the Game]