GameStop Pulling Deus Ex: Human Revolution PC Off Shelves [UPDATED]

You can send all the internet hate you want. It doesnt matter. 
We are not gamestops customers. They don't care about us. 
Gamestops customers are 5 year olds pestering mammy to buy them a game. Grannies desperately trying to buy a birthday present and bro gamers buying their annual cod and madden fix. 

That statemeny from Squeenix is bull.
We acknowledge the right of Gamestop to have the final say on thr contents. Do they hell, if I go to a shop to buy a boxed product I want what the manufacturer put in it, nothing more or less.

A bit xenophobic, eh Gamestop? What's this say about how confident Gamestop is as a company? To me it shows a company that fears they will be out of business in a decade, and instead of changing, they just do their best to obfuscate choice to their customer base. Better hope those people don't buy a Steam Game.

live in the uk we don't have gamestops but that is some bullshit

So when does Gamestop start pulling games that support Steamworks?

@ the_chojin99 - Actually, we do now, they opened up a web portal based in the UK and are supposidly going to open stores in key locations....Just when you thought it couldnt get any worse than GAME lol

So when does Gamestop start pulling games that support Steamworks?

@AndrewB said:

So when does Gamestop start pulling games that support Steamworks?

Gamestop's PC section is like three games sitting in the dusty corner of the store with a flickering light overhead.

Does anyone even buy PC games at GameStop anymore?

One word.  Steam.

I understand not wanting to promote a competing business, but you need to arrange that beforehand. You can't go and manually remove value from the box and then sell it as new after the fact. Given that they didn't know about the coupon beforehand, they should have either pulled the game off shelves or just manned up and sold it. 
 
I've never been too bothered by anything GS did before, but this is just slimy as hell. I'm done with them, no matter what pre-order bullshit they have.

Gamestop has a digital store too right? Does this mean that they're also forcibly removing discs from games that use Steam to authenticate?

@AndrewB said:

So when does Gamestop start pulling games that support Steamworks?

Gamestop's PC section is like three games sitting in the dusty corner of the store with a flickering light overhead.

@MikeydCT:

just sent this to GameStop:

Good Morning,

I wanted to take a moment to inform GameStop that they have lost a very loyal customer. For the past ten years I have made an effort to pre-order and purchase all of my games from GameStop. Over this time it is fair to say I have put up with a lot of less than satisfactory behavior from GameStop employees at stores, and GameStop corporate policies. I have always taken issue with the GameStop policy of selling "gutted" copies of new releases at full price. It always made zero seance to me that if I were to purchase a game and open it that it is only worth store credit if I decide to bring it back yet if GameStop does it the company is comfortable with asking full MSRP [sorry but there is no logic in the corporate policy].

The recent actions that GameStop has taken in regards to opening all copies of Deus Ex to remove a simple coupon has pushed me over the line. It is absurd that this directive was given to all of the retail stores.

Yesterday I went to my local GameStop and canceled all of my current pre-orders as a direct result of GameStops actions, and I see no reason at all to continue to do any business with the company.

I expect this email to fall upon deaf ears but I wanted it to be know that poor corporate decisions can in the end cause you to loose loyal customers.

Thank you for your time.

Square Enix kissing GameStop's ass shows how much power GameStop has. How unfortunate.

@SwirlinDervish said:

kinda disappointed in Square's response to this, why are they blaming themselves. Clue me in, please?

they're being the bigger man. It's actually quite noble.

Who seriously still buys boxed copies of PC games? I think that's the bigger shock in all of this...

The only people losing out here is GameStop. But how many PC games do they even sell in the first place?

This is it, Gamestop has officially joined my black list of corporations I don't make business with, right up there with Apple.

Square Enix forced to kiss some serious ass obviously.

What a retarded company... I've had nothing but bad experiences from them in the past and I'm frankly surprised that they are still in business..

What a bullshit Square-Enix response.
GameStop can "adjust" the products where they see fit? Way to bend over.

The Gamestop in my little town is the best place to buy games. This won't stop me from going there. It has a comic shop type feel to it and the people are great. I bought Deus Ex there and I'll buy a bunch more fall titles there. I'd rather support that store than the Futureshop in my town where the service blows. I'd rather support a local store that a giant website.

I'm not defending what the higher management chose to do here but I care way more about the direct service I get.

Yet people still buy from them make a stand or stfu. I worked there for three years. We had the most sales in Texas for Halo so they wanted to up the price of the game 5 dollars. Then Pc gamers never pre order so doom 3 we only had 50 pre and were sent 70 the dn forced me to sell pre order copies I told him no! But had to only 16 ppl got their pre order. I stopped buying games from them for the most part. But my gf wanted Lfd 2 they sold me a copy of it new but opened no discount fuck them!

What a PR nightmare for them. They seem to only ever choose the wrong thing to do. Maybe they should fuck off entirely.

Kinda embarrassed that the bulk of this community can't put their emotions aside from time to time for the sake of having a logical discussion about these sort of things. 
 
Seriously, can 85% of this community honestly not understand Gamestop's position on this at all? 

Square Enix correctly admitting they were at fault and GameStop still gets the blame? Awesum.

GameStop basically had three options here: allow the game to be sold with the code after having been blindsided into carying it in the first place (which would set a precedent and be criminally stupid on their part), remove the codes and sell the game (which they did), or pull the stock from shelves and send it all back (which they have now done).

Perhaps they should have taken the last option immediately, but I bet if they had done that, they'd still have got just as much shit for it from the press and from gamers - probably even more. 'GameStop fucks over SquareEnix / PC gaming by pulling game from shelves on launch day' etc. Square put GameStop in a lose-lose situation here and I think they are right to apologise for it.

Square Enix apologizes when GameStop acted like fuckfaces? Oh great

Square-Enix: "We realize the seventeen different ways GameStop could fuck us in the future if we piss them off, so we're going to apologize now and let them save some face."

@JohnPaulVann said:

What about buying used games, people? Don't we need Gamestop for that????

Good luck buying those used PC games.

Nobody is looking good in this situation.

Demoskinos wrote: In rare cases its actually cheaper.  Case in point Shogun 2 is still $49.99 on steam while my local walmart had the disc version with extra DLC for $29.99.  I'll buy a disc copy if it makes sense.

Bad move on both their parts. Surprised SE doesn't seem to be getting shit for this.

They should have just did this from the very beginning. Instead of taking the vouchers out.

@ProfessorEss said:

Kinda embarrassed that the bulk of this community can't put their emotions aside from time to time for the sake of having a logical discussion about these sort of things. Seriously, can 85% of this community honestly not understand Gamestop's position on this at all?

Could have something to do with how 85% of this community view the world in binary colours, and in this case being unable to process that this situation contains more than two viewpoints.

I don't get why Square Enix felt like it needed to apologize.

@RecSpec said:

They should have just did this from the very beginning. Instead of taking the vouchers out.

Exactly. If they just pulled the games, it wouldn't be as upsetting. It's shady to open a game, reseal it, and call it new.

@Skywarpgold said:

I don't get why Square Enix felt like it needed to apologize.

It's for legal and PR reason's.

I'm sure the employees at Squire Enix are talking shit about behind close doors at how Gamestop is being a bunch of bitches. Sooner or later their retail stores will fizzle away with downloads. Then all the Gamestop employees can join in the unemployment line.

this totally does make sense though. it would be like buying the game at walmart and getting a best buy gift card, rule number 1, you don't promote your competition

I find it baffling that some of you think unboxing a game for shelf display or some other purpose automatically make it pre-owned/used.

You people do realize that the discs didn't just automatically materialize inside that box, do you? Not to mention most people probably won't even pop the disc into the computer - they'd just redeem the Steam code.

@DrThePunisher said:

@RecSpec said:

They should have just did this from the very beginning. Instead of taking the vouchers out.

Exactly. If they just pulled the games, it wouldn't be as upsetting. It's shady to open a game, reseal it, and call it new.

There is nothing shady about opening something then selling it. I've brought all kinds of things up to a counter (in other stores) so I can open them in the store before I decide to buy it. The fact that they removed things they didn't like is a huge issue. What if Target went in and removed all the batteries that come with kids toys so that people would have to buy target brand batteries? What if Walmart went into new DVD's that had free movie tickets for another film and removed those because they sold Movie theater gift cards in the store?

The shady part was taking content out of the box so that the consumer did not receive it when they purchased the game new. If you open the box and reseal it you're still receiving everything you should. If you only want factory sealed products then only accept those, that is your choice. But the shady part of this is taking things out of the box and by extension from the paying customer. It's very close to stealing. (and in my mind is the same thing)

whatever I don't shop at sheepstop anyway

I'm surprised you people play any video games at all. All I read is Gamestop sucks, Activision sucks, EA sucks, Ubisoft sucks. When you stop and think about it, the whole video game industry is ever changing and everyone is just trying to find that competitive edge and make a buck before the market changes. Even Valve and EA are having their issues because of competitive business practices.

@Tumbler: I'd prefer to buy something unopened, but you are correct, the true shady act was removing of something. I'm curious if there can be any legal action taken by the people who bought the game with the coupon removed. That's value they were supposedly paying for, that GameStop removed. Just as you said, I'd be upset if a toy that said batteries included, didn't come with batteries. That would be value being taken away from me.

@DrThePunisher said:

@Tumbler: I'd prefer to buy something unopened, but you are correct, the true shady act was removing of something. I'm curious if there can be any legal action taken by the people who bought the game with the coupon removed. That's value they were supposedly paying for, that GameStop removed. Just as you said, I'd be upset if a toy that said batteries included, didn't come with batteries. That would be value being taken away from me.

I prefer not to shop at that place for a variety of reasons. I've never run into the buying something used for new prices but that would irk me as well. The best thing to come out of all this will be the public awareness of this store's policy to screw paying customers. I doubt there will be any legal battle going forward, the retailer/publisher relationship is more important than winning a battle in court for the game publisher. I think it's more important for the public to report stuff like this and make it common knowledge. This has caught the attention of a lot of folks and in that respect we're getting more "benefit" as consumers out of this shit storm than we ever could have hoped if gamestop has simply sold the game as is and chewed out Square behind the scenes.

People may continue to shop there but everyone is now well aware that when you buy Gamestop games, you're buying stuff they have "adjusted".

Man. I hope that Tracer Tong mission is at all worthwhile.