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GameStop --- Unethical business practices?
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Experience 1: I decide to apply for a job at the the Edmonton City Center EB Games location. I get called for an interview, and end-up sitting down at a desk that has what is pretty clearly cocaine residue on it and talking with a manager who is so stoned that he's half-drooling all over himself.
One of the only offers for employment that I turned down.
Experience 2: I purchase Starcraft 2 from the Shaganappi EB Games location in Calgary, 'brand new'. I go home to find that the contents of the box have very obviously been shuffled through and the seal has been obviously been removed / replaced. The CD key has already been used.
Easy enough fix; I just call Blizzard customer service, since I didn't feel like going all the way over to Shaganappi again.
So there's my bias. I fucking hate GameStop.
They're selling products under false pretenses, that's what's unethical about it. They're also tampering with the publisher's product and trying to strong-arm OnLive out of the market (which is hilarious, in that some meth-addled executive thinks that removing coupons from game boxes will somehow give them a competitive edge over OnLive); for all you know, employees are jotting down CD keys and either using them themselves to pirate games and / or selling to pirates. There's a reason the fucking box is supposed to be sealed until it reaches the end user (and being forced to defend that is embarrassing for me, given how much I hate anti-piracy measures / copy-protection).
Boutique tends to imply a small, specialty retailer that serves a market not met by larger companies. That's not what Gamestop is though. Gamestop is why EB and all the other gaming/software stores are gone, they're the behemoth that bought up or merged with everyone else. The problem is right about the time they finished all their acquisitions and began to rest on their laurels, Walmart and the other big-box stores realized just how much money there was in the gaming market, and started actively pursuing it, throwing their purchasing power behind it. And Valve went "Who the heck needs a store?" The market that they'd tried to dominate suddenly left them behind, because they'd focused on the present instead of where game retailing was going.
You post came off as being oppositional, so i assumed you misread something in my post. my bad.
You're suggesting that lack of disclosure is the only ethical aspect of what transpired, but I don't necessarily agree. I find GameStop's general strongarm tactics to be borderline unethical, and a part of that is their aggressive treatment of publishers (like, requiring no vouchers for competing services). I don't think disclosure, in this case, negates the ethical implications of what they did.
Basically, GameStop has managed to wedge themselves into a prominent position in the retail gaming industry and how they conduct themselves has repercussions for all gamers, regardless of whether or not they even shop at GameStop. So this OnLive stuff? I guess it depends on your definition of ethics, and how they weigh out. GameStop is a corporation and as such has some ethical obligation to pursue their bottom line, but I find their aggressive practices borderline unethical.
Meta comment: People usually assume that when they are being replied to on a forum, they are being argued against. I am guilty of this too, but it isn't always the case.
Trying to strong-arm On-live by refusing to sell coupons for On-live is not even a reprehensible action. I wouldn't even call it "strong-arming" it. It is just an example of not supporting a competitor, or a potential competitor in this case. The only thing bad in this case is how GS stopped supporting On-Live.
But the "how" isn't limited to opening boxes and selling them as new without disclosure.
The "how" also includes dictating what Square Enix can or cannot put in their box.
While I can see this from GameStop's perspective - who would want to sell products that include vouchers for a competing service? - I absolutely mislike their aggressive treatment of publishers (and competitors, for that matter).
After all, GameStop are nothing but middlemen, but they are middlemen who have managed to accrue some level of clout and they wield this power in ways that decrease rather than increase value for the consumer.
I don't believe the issue is as cut and dry as you are making it out to be.
GameStop recently acquired Impulse Driven, which is a Steam competitor.
Would GameStop be acting ethically or unethically if they simply stopped stocking and selling games with Steamworks, as doing so drives people toward using Steam?
I would consider this unethical considering their position in the retail gaming market. I can understand why continuing to do so would be unsavory for them, but I don't believe it would be an ethical boycott.
Except in special cases involving peoples' health and safety (pharmacies refusing to stock birth control for instance), I don't think that retailers should be required to sell anything they don't want to sell. If Target doesn't want to sell frozen pizzas because they're worried it will conflict with their deal with Pizza Hut, for example, that's fine. Stupid, but fine.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I just wrote about what I think about what you call "strong-arming". I am referring strictly to this case though, as I have no real experience with GameStop I cannot make a statement about how they generally operate.
The general rule is that disclosure negates the unethical parts from actions. I think you will find pretty much any textbook on corporate ethics/business ethics to agree with that. The action can still be reprehensible or course. But just becasue you disagree with somethin doesn't make it unethical.
My opinion is that if I had come in to a GS shop to buy the new DE game and seen a sign saying something along the lines "Hey, Square-Enix inserted On-Live coupons into these boxes outside of our contractual agreement, and GS sees On-Live as a direct competitor. Therefore we have removed the coupons from the game boxes. Everything else in the boxes remains unused and unchanged" then I would not see GS as having done anything unethical. I might not like it, I might be wary of other box tampering from GS, but I would not consider it unethical.
You don't think the market position of a retailer changes their ethical responsibilities in any way?
For instance, remember when that pedophile book came out in Amazon? People argued that Amazon was wrong for pulling the book because they essentially have a monopoly in the book selling market. I came down on the side of defending Amazon for the exact reasons you are saying now, however now? I'm not sure I would defend them for yanking the book considering how much of a decline brick and mortar book stores have recently seen. If you manage to position yourself in the retail market as an actual product gateway, then I think you have less freedom to pick and choose what you sell, ethically speaking.
Ideally I agree with you that we should err on the side of freedom, even for corporations, but I think there is a meridian that can be crossed where, given a certain market context, certain practices would be unethical.
For instance, I've used Gmail for like 10 years now. If Google changed their terms of service and started charging monthly for it or you would lose access to it, there would be hell to pay and rightly so. (I'm not sure if their terms of service even allow them to do this, but let's for argument's sake assume they did.)
Of course, this is very murky. Should GameStop be forced to stock all products equally? Of course not. Gears of War 3 will obviously sell more copies than, I dunno, the next Persona game. But that's different than trying to passively dissuade people from using a competing service.
I admit I have no educational background in economics, but I am sure there are other ethical concerns than simply "disclosure." You see a lot of antitrust stuff popping up now and then, especially between computer hardware manufacturers (there was something between INTEL and ATI recently, wasn't there?) I'm not going to pretend that GameStop is an actual monopoly here, but I do think that positioning themselves the way they have and then doing whatever they can to dissuade people from using or outright defecting to competing services tends toward being unethical. I don't comprehend how these actions have zero ethical weight, as you are suggesting.
Except they're not refusing to sell coupons (which I would be fine with) - they're tampering with a vendor's product to remove a coupon that that vendor is offering. They're basically saying, "Hey, SquareEnix, you're not allowed to have this business deal with OnLive,"
That's strong-arming in every sense of the word, and totally unethical, even in the loosey goosey world of business ethics. OnLive had to pull whatever strings to get their coupons into the Deus Ex box to begin with, had to go through the expense of printing off the coupons, etc, only to have some significant portion of the marketing effort shat on by a retailer.
GameStop had a lot of options and they opted to walk the road of toxic business relationships & hostile business practice.
I hope their cloud service fails as spectacularly as Gizmondo.
We are writing responses at the same time here... trying to meta by combining things here.
I do not buy games in general so I have no experience with GS or the game-purchase market as a whole. I am treating and discussing this coupon issue as if it existed in a vacuum. I am fully aware that GS might be a giant bully company, but as I know little about them I can only really discuss this issue.
I don't know what the sales agreement between Square-Enix and GS said, but unless the contract states that Square have the right to add value-adds into the boxes then GS have the right to pull those boxes and generally throw a fit if Square does add value-adds (this is what I think happened here).
I don't think that "GS dictating Square what to put in the boxes" is what really happened, nor is it anything but typical business practices. Using your bargaining power to increase the benefits to your organization is is only bad if taken to extremes, otherwise it is just common sense. Square are free to find other distributors if they absolutely must have the On-Live coupons in there, and they are free to not put those coupons in there if they have to go through GS. Box content should be covered in normal contract negotiations and are not unethical in any way.
And no, I don't think it is unethical for GS to stop selling Steamworks games unless they are under contract to do so. If GS was the only distributor then there might be a anti-trust case, but I hardly think that would come even close to apply here. I think a business should be free to choose what products it will or will not sell at any given time as long as contracts are honored. So in this specific case, GS are free to pull Steamworks games off their shelves as long as they honor any pre-orders or pre-purchases that currently exist.
This doesn't necessarily mean I like that they do so
I see what you're saying, and part of me wants to agree. Where I land, though, is first that I personally would judge the actions on a case-by-case basis. If the retailer has a good reason for removing the product from their inventory, then I'm okay with that. If it's a bad reason, then I'd criticize that. I think that if a retailer has developed so much market dominance that their refusal to stock a product becomes itself a form of censorship, where simple criticism is not sufficient, then we can conclude that there is so little marketplace competition that we really should be looking at breaking up that company for having a monopoly.
Of course I don't know if we even do that anymore in our brave new corporatocracy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I don't personally feel like any common product vendor has such a lock on their market that de-listing an item could be considered unethical. As big as Amazon is for books, libraries exist and inter-library loan is a thing. You could get any book you want into your hot little hands eventually, even if every bookseller that isn't Amazon ceased to exist tomorrow. Well, maybe not vanity press shit, but I don't see that as a problem for anyone.
Anyway, and unrelated to the whole ethics/new vs. used thing, how is OnLive even a competitor for Impulse? I mean, if you're buying Deus Ex in the store, you aren't going to be buying it on Impulse. Correct me if I'm wrong, but OnLive is, essentially, video game streaming. You subscribe to a game and can play it remotely without a local install. Impulse, on the other hand, is a Steam/Origin-style online purchase and download service, isn't it? Unless GameStop has some game-streaming plan up their sleeve, these two offerings have essentially nothing to do with one another. The OnLive trial for Deus Ex, which you have already given GameStop money to play, lets you play it, basically, without the disc. GameStop is offering...what? To let you buy it again on Impulse if you lose the disc or want to play it elsewhere? I can imagine all manner of scenarios whereby I might want to use the OnLive service after having purchased a hard-copy version of a game, but I can think of zero where Impulse is even relevant to me at that point. Unless GS gives you a download code for Impulse when you purchase a disc?
Removing said coupons from boxes and pulling the product from the shelves so customers wont acquire the coupons is pretty much the same as "refusing to sell them" no?
And I don't see this as GS telling Square that they cannot have a relationship with On-live. What they said was more akin to "we wont support this promotion". Mind you that GS stands to loose as well since this game will be a top seller. Any company would have objected to selling a product that promoted a competitor. Again, what GS did wrong was how they dealt with this issue. Secretly opening/tampering with the boxes is wrong and reprehensible, but the reason why they did it is not unethical at all. this will basically boil down to what the contract actually states, I explained that reasoning in an earlier post.
Telling another company to choose between "that partnership or ours" is not unethical at all unless the choosing company have no option other than compliance. It is the same as a restaurant choosing to serve coca cola products or pepsi products, cos picking either means they cannot sell the other. Deals like this are standard in business and not illegal or unethical at all. Picking one distribution channel will deny entry into others for almost all products. There is nothing unethical about it at all. GS does not have a monopoly, real or practical, on game distribution, so Square was not forced to comply. Square could have said "fine, then you wont get to sell our game because we value On-Live more than we value you, so go stick your head in a pig". This issue should have been covered in contract negotiatons.
I think the reason this happened was because Square did not see On-Live as a competitor to GS, and therefore didn't see anything wrong with this. The added coupons would have increased sales and thus benefited both GS and Square and On-Live.
Well for piracy industries talks as a whole. If people started pirating Xbox 360 games like crazy, and only 360 games, then Sony and Nintendo execs would secretly throw gigantic parties while officially give some vague statement about "piracy isn't, you know, techincally right".
This.
Fine; I'll settle with 'irrational & idiotic' instead...
My thoughts exactly. But for some Randroid asshole sitting at the top of the GameStop corporate food chain, having mutually beneficial arrangements is somehow impossible, and OnLive is some terrible pest that must be exterminated (...and it's still hilarious that they believe the way to do this is to remove coupons from one game title).
What is irrational about not wanting to actively support a competitor? Yes, On-Live might not be an actual competitor to GS at this point, but it is how GS sees it.
But if GS sees On-Live as a competitor, then it isn't a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Except not. For example, it's become increasingly difficult to pirate Nintendo's in-house games due to unique kinds of copy-protection; as a result, Nintendo's in-house games aren't generally distributed through pirate networks (I won't say it's impossible to find them, because crackers seem to be able to circumvent almost anything these days, but it's certainly not easy) - and yet Nintendo was one of the instrumental agencies involved in witnessing for the prosecution of Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström.
Bear in mind that those 4 gentlemen were sentenced to a year in jail & fined over 4 million dollars (the prison sentence was removed upon appeal; thank goodness for Sweden's penal system) for their part in operating a file sharing network. GameSpot orders it's employees to violate copy-protection measures both for Deux Ex & OnLive's service, and what are the consequences? Will anyone kick-in the door of to the mansion of the man who ordered it done and have him arrested (as happened with Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström)? Will the industry sling mud at GameStop for it and label them thieves?
My guess is not.
1) Game Stop removes the game from it's shelves, ships them back to Square Enix to fix their mistake.
1a)Square Enix sends new copies of everything, Gamestop sells them
1b)Square Enix opens the ones shipped back, takes out the coupon, re-seals the boxes, ships them back. Gamestop sells them.
2) Gamestop saves a bunch of money in shipping by doing essentially what Square Enix probably would've done anyways themselves.
This is completely wrong, as anybody with basic Google skills can discover.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
If a book store refuses to sell a book because it promotes anti-bookstore material. So be it.
If a book store decides to sell a book and then rips out the pages containing anti-bookstore material. Then that's a shitty thing to do, I'll burn the shit out of that bookstore.
What if the book promotes it as an insert in the sleeve, rather than pages within the book?
The in-houses titles (Pokemon, Mario, Zelda, etc) all have, for lack of a better word, 'old school' DRM. The game 'knows' if it is a clone or not, and if it detects that it is, it makes itself unplayable in hilarious ways.
Try Googling 'Pokemon DRM' for an example.
That's because shrinkwrap is not a software copy protection measure under any sane definition of the term.
Edit: Also, the First Sale Doctrine protects Gamestop's right to take the shrinkwrap off of any product it legally buys before it resells it.
Persecution, not prosecution. There was nothing even remotely legal about the treatment of the Pirate Bay guys. Starting with there being no Swedish law against filesharing at the time.
But you seem to miss the fact that I said "while officially give some vague statement about "piracy isn't, you know, techincally right" (look, I even kept my typo). When push comes to shove, Nintendo will side with its own industry over piracy even though it privately is glad that the Xbox brand is losing revenue due to piracy (and subsequently have its rep damaged by developers/publishers).
But your TPB example fails on a rather major point: Those innocent men were convicted of distributing products without money being involved and thus removing revenue from the developers/distributors. The GS situation does nothing of the sort since the games were still sold on the shelf at regular price. Apples and Oranges really
Yes, but the outrage has largely been about how they did it, not why they did it.
So how is that an issue? Either way, the boxes are opened up, the coupon is removed, the boxes are re-sealed, and then it reaches the customers' hands... I'm not sure what the big deal is.
Thus solving the problem once and for all.
http://kotaku.com/5834879/gamestop-apologizes-for-deus-ex-coupon-removal-with-50-gift-cards
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Tampering with a product without full disclosure = unethical business practice.
And yes, in the grand scheme of things it isn't really a big deal, the game (the reason for the purchase) remained unchanged.
Wow, what the fuck?
I understand why Gamestop would want to remove the coupon based on their own business interests. Yet at the same time, I don't care about their business interests. I'm a consumer. I don't want anything that could be potentially of value to me, removed, from a product I buy. Therefore I'm less inclined to buy from this place of business in the future for fear of it happening again.
I'm sure it's all part of their evil conglomerate plan. Just wait. I'll bet there's a ton of MSG on the cards, and they'll only let you buy Ubisoft games with them.
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Does anyone know if this is just Gamestop US or does it count for Gamestop Canada too?
No, but the sealed box with the registration keys kept inside said sealed box sure as Hell is a component of the DRM.
No, the gentlemen were accused (and found guilty of) violating copywrite. I mean, somebody somewhere in the chain of sharing a game had to buy the damn thing (unless it was a leaked copy), so there would still be money & legal sales involved. The GS guys break open the boxes containing CD keys & promotional keys for OnLive's service, and then after rifling through the contents of the box (I'm so sure that none of those employees would ever do something like write down a key for themselves and/or make som photocopies and/or scans) resells it to a consumer. Now, even if the consumer gets a game who's key has already been used, it's not a big deal - just call Squeenix and get a new key - but you don't see how that's not only wrong, but a bullshit double standard for the industry? The retailers are allowed to violate copywrite protection materials when anyone else would be called a crook for doing the same?
EDIT: Also, it just dawned on me that it's sort-of ironic that, of all the games this could've happened with, it had to be Deus Ex.