US games retail giant, GameStop, are discarding the OnLive codes given away with new PC retail copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The codes come on cards inside the game boxes, which must be opened in order to remove and destroy (or keep?) the complimentary OnLive copy of the game.
In a statement made to Ars Technica, a spokesperson for the company has stated that “Square Enix packed the competitor’s coupon with our DXHR product without our prior knowledge and we did pull these coupons”. So it seems that GameStop expects retailers to clear pack-in literature with them before they get shelf space and if the publishers fail to comply, well, GameStop will just rip open your product, throw away part of it and then sell it without warning the customer. Nice.
Remember, this is the same company that apparently allows their staff to take home brand new games, play them and then bring them back into the store and sell them to unsuspecting customers as new.
Obviously, with GameStop making their own push into digital content distribution next year, they see OnLive as a threat to their business plans. But those cards are part of Square Enix’s pack-in literature. Isn’t this akin to Toys R Us opening boxes to remove free batteries so they can try to sell you some of their own brand at the checkout?
Square Enix doesn’t have any financial stake in OnLive, as far as we’re aware, but they might have an interest in the platform’s success in the future as a healthy platform means more avenues to sell their products.
This seems like a big retailer using its influence in one field to destroy the chances of a competitor in another field that it hasn’t even started competing with yet. I can’t quite get my head around how many levels of wrong that is.
Source: Ars Technica
KeRaSh
What a dick move. Suck it up or don’t sell the game at all.
online4ntagonist
Well they allready have their name going for them. Just take away the ‘game’ part and we’re done.