GameStop Playing Hardball Over Retail Steam Installs?

Honestly, knowing how the company works (since I worked there for a time), it wouldn't surprise me that they would do something like that.

"I noticed on the Gamestop website that the original Dawn of War and it's expansions are available for download. Mabye all this stems from THQ not allowing Gamestop to digitally distribute as well."

I live in the UK, so I don't have to deal with them and had blissfully before never heard anything of Gamestop before 1 year ago, And you know what the funny thing is?
Since that time, I've heard tonnes of stuff about that store and it has ALL been bad! lol.

They sound like a store over here in the UK that's called GAME (yeah the letter's ARE in upper case on the store entrance too lol, self-obsessed is my opinion.)
Anyway their employee's are in formal clothes (ALMOST SUIT ATTIRE) and the only thing they know about game's is the price of a product AFTER they've looked in their computer's. And when thing's have been released already, AGAIN!AFTER!!!! they've looked.

And then there's Gamestation. (Notice the normal first capital letter and the rest in lowercase, ie: not up their own arses.)
Who were once the gamer's store of choice (Now UNFORTUNATELY owned FULLY by GAME. Yes I said !FULLY!.)  purposely employed gamer's to sell game's TO gamer's.
Which meant we could just show up, kick back and just chat if those guys were'nt busy. They didn't even get uptight if you were there for half an hour chatting and left without buying a game. Aah, those were the day's... lol.

Now I like Steam quite a bit. I think they've found a fantastic niche in the market and established a good fan base of buyer's. The only gripe I have with Steam is that they'll sell the orange box for £16.99 but they'll willingly sell portal seperately for £13.99!!!!!! That bit dosn't seem fair but what the hey, I still like Steam.

What are you Americans complaining about? At least you HAVE GameStop!

I stopped shopping at gamestop

Look into this more every site that reported on it has not really followed up and I'm super curious. I discovered this the night before when I was looking to see if they had a good preorder bonus for it.

Every PC game I have bought in that past year and a half has been on steam...well besides spore..lol

A resounding eff u to GameStop.

Anyone who shops at GameStop hates the videogame industry.

I work for GameStop and in our daily email it said simply we would stop reserving the title. No explanation.

Now despite what people say about us GameStop employees, I'm not an idiot. I have no doubt this all has to do with Steam. The beta is available exclusively threw Steam threw the purchase of Soulstorm (which has been discounted down to under 10 bucks, but THQ also loaded serial numbers into the Steam database, so if you bought Soulstorm at a GameStop, you can still particapate). The reason Orange Box and Left 4 Dead get a pass is simply Steam is Valve.

If thats the reason GameStop has ceased reservations (although its still in the computer, its just no longer reservable. All of you who preordered still get your copy) it makes sense. The last time I saw this happen was Warhawk. The game went up the night before on PSN. So our initial allotment of five for our three reserves is all we ever got of the $59.99 bundle. Then Gran Turismo showed up late in the day on PSN when it hit stores. I don't fully remember, but I think SOCOM didn't even hit the same day.

GameStop is trying to make money. By not letting a company sell their product in the 4,000 stores in the US hurts the game developer more then it hurts GameStop. GameStop doesn't make a lot of money on new games to start with so they don't care. The PC section is already so small.

I'm not defending it. I'm just explaining it. Your ultimate goal as a company is to make money. Ultimatly this move might make GameStop more money. Cause honestly, despite all of you guys complaining about how evil GameStop is and how you will never shop there, a lot of people do.

So a PC game isn't going to be available at Gamestop? What else is new?

Almost every Gamestop nowadays is a closet-sized display area for used games, Wii shovelware, and 360, Wii, and PS3 games whose developers rent shelf space. Sometimes, there are 6 PC games on a shelf behind the cashier. (4 of the 6 are WoW, WoW: Burning Crusade, WoW: WOTLK, and the last Star Wars game.)

Seriously, this is like Gamestop trying to hurt sales of Lindsor Truffles or Lever 2000 by banning them from store shelves. Any potential buyer who knows about the game will buy it; any potential buyer who doesn't know about the game would have never found out about it in a Gamestop anyway.

Gamestop probably shouldn't stock any Steam games.

I didn't bother returning after I got Steam with Portal.

Wow, talk about jumping to conclusions. Hmm...news based on hearsay from an unnamed source. Yeah, sounds reliable to me. Run the story!

If this is true, Gamestop is forcing people to use Steam by not carrying it to force THQ to not use Steam so Gamestop doesn't lose money?  That doesn't make any sense.

And Steam continues its slow "steam"roll into domination.

Does anyone shop via Gamestop anyways? It's a moot point for me.

I am glad they pulled it.  Mandatory install?  No thanks, that violates consumer rights.  I would not want to sell something that forced my users to install an application that was not technically needed but nonetheless required.  When you buy a retail game then you should just get the damn game, and not be forced to submit to restrictive, irremovable DRM or forced to interfaced through a crappy app.

But I do agree with everyone that there has been more than enough evidence that Gamestop doesn't give a shit about consumers rights, just their business.  Right pull, for all the wrong reasons.

whatever, games are sold elsewhere