Gamefly is really good at the moment, at least for me.

So the lovely wife gave me a gamefly sub on my birthday and it has been really awesome so far. There have been so many games that have come out over this generation that I never got to play due to time, money, really not sure if I would like that game etc, etc. But now having this account has been awesome. Dragons Dogma, Darksiders 2, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Mass Effect 3, Assassins Creed 3 and on and on.

We had our daughter right around the time Mass Effect 3 came out and it just was not feasible for me to play at the time, and then with the huge internet explosion over the game I put it off for some time. But after renting it I bought it outright for $13 off of Gamefly and it was great, one of my favorite games this year. Just wondering if anyone else is enjoying this service or a different one. It has definitely expanded my experience with games of this generation.

So the lovely wife gave me a gamefly sub on my birthday and it has been really awesome so far. There have been so many games that have come out over this generation that I never got to play due to time, money, really not sure if I would like that game etc, etc. But now having this account has been awesome. Dragons Dogma, Darksiders 2, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Mass Effect 3, Assassins Creed 3 and on and on.

We had our daughter right around the time Mass Effect 3 came out and it just was not feasible for me to play at the time, and then with the huge internet explosion over the game I put it off for some time. But after renting it I bought it outright for $13 off of Gamefly and it was great, one of my favorite games this year. Just wondering if anyone else is enjoying this service or a different one. It has definitely expanded my experience with games of this generation.

I've been using the service for years now and I'm happy with it.

@Phatmac: That's good to hear, just started but it really is great being able to try something out and see if it's a game I would like to purchase or just spend a bit of time with. I'm only doing the one disc out at a time but it is pretty perfect for the amount of time I have to game nowadays.

I've also been a member for years and I've been happy with it. I understand it's not for everybody, but I never really got why the GB crew talk so much shit about it.

This was my primary source of gaming for about 3 years, and it worked wonderfully for that. The only problem is I found that I tended to forego playing longer games, because that meant there were shorter games I was neglecting in favor of that one. Honestly though the gamefly well drys up pretty quickly unless it's the only way you can play.

I've been a member for a few years and I enjoy it. I wish they would ship games a little faster but most of the time I am happy with it. A few months ago they had a contest on their facebook page to get a free membership for a year and I won it. So this year so far i've been extremely happy.

I guess it really depends on how you play videogames and where you live. I live close enough to my distribution center that getting a new game takes about two days, and I mostly use Gamefly to try out games that I'm thinking about buying or that I only ever want to play once. It's not for getting every major new game that comes out, when it comes out. If you use it like that, especially if you live far away from a distribution center, you aren't going to be a satisfied customer.

I've never really understood the vitriol or (comical) criticism Gamefly gets - when I used the service is was fantastic. I bought many a game with an amazing deal.

Used games...thanks for hurting the industry

I've been a subscriber for about 3 months now and I'm liking it, especially since I'm reasonably close to a distribution center. It's a good way to play the shorter, throwaway popcorn games I don't necessarily want to own forever.

I had it years ago and it was mostly awful. On one occasion it took two weeks for me to receive my next game. Back then they only had four distribution centers in the country. I don't know if they've gotten more since then but that isn't nearly enough. If you live near one of their DC's I guess it wouldn't be much of an issue, but in my experience they couldn't get their shit together fast enough to keep me subscribing.

I was a longtime subscriber, but I stopped in July, they simply stopped shipping me anything. My q could be filled with old games with high availability and I'd be lucky to get one game every month.

I live by Gamefly, been a member since '08 and haven't looked back since. Screw the whole "you have to buy new or you're a cretin" nonsense, some of us just cant afford to pay 60 on every game that comes our way. I sometimes buy new games but when I do, I rarely find that its worth all of the extra money since I almost never pick it up again.

Gamefly4lyfe.

@LaszloKovacs: It's more about how they use Gamefly than the service itself. They seem to get into the habit of renting a game and keeping it for months, which means they paid more for renting the game than outright buying it new.

I've been thinking of re-upping my Gamefly subscription. I feel like there is a wave of games that are coming out this year that I want to play but not buy. Lately I have been just waiting for Steam sales to get games cheap, but I miss playing games right when they come out and being part of the zeitgeist discussion.

I just got it back up for $1 freaking dollar for that month and so far I love it in the month month and a half I played 4 or 5 games. I live in south California so I have a distribution center in LA. Just sent back binary domain and waiting on la noire

@clumsyninja1 said:

Used games...thanks for hurting the industry

Really? Because of this service I have been able to try games that one I would have regretted, Castelvania for example, just bleh. But two, I have bought three games because of this service, Xcom, Dragons Dogma and Mass Effect 3 so I'm thinking it actually helps the industry. If you are going to make a crap product at least I can try it out first and realize it is crap but if I love it, well then I buy it.

@Encephalon said:

I've been a subscriber for about 3 months now and I'm liking it, especially since I'm reasonably close to a distribution center. It's a good way to play the shorter, throwaway popcorn games I don't necessarily want to own forever.

Exactly.

I've been a subscriber for four years now, and I'm at a point where I'm not getting anything sent for days because everything in my queue is "low". If I want anything good from the past 4-5 months (apparently Sleeping Dogs and Borderlands 2 is still considered "recent"), I have to wait over a week at the earliest. I'm at a point now where I have caught up on older games, so I can't resort to ones I've missed anymore. I understand having to wait a couple of weeks for a new release to be available, but the most recent game in my queue is Far Cry 3 and that was over a month ago. Not only that, but shipping went from 2 days to 4-5 days over the past few months. Apparently they still have a Fast Return feature, but I haven't seen that happen for me in years, and when it did, it happened 1 out of every 10 times.

I'm still technically saving money because I still get 2-4 games a month, but it's gotten ridiculous. For a while, I was hoping Netflix would enter the market, but now I just wish something better to come along. I know there are ways to "cheat" the system -- like only having one game that's about to come out in your queue -- but I still need to play 5-6 games from last fall.

Being a new user is great because they want you to stay, but I've been with them for a while, and they have gotten enough of my money.

I canceled my GameFly because I was playing so much Warcraft, and never bothered to re-subscribe when I quit WoW. Now days, I play mostly on PC, so it wouldn't do me any good. I have a habit of buying old games that I'm even considering playing on impulse, anyway.

@wjb said:

I've been a subscriber for four years now, and I'm at a point where I'm not getting anything sent for days because everything in my queue is "low". If I want anything good from the past 4-5 months (apparently Sleeping Dogs and Borderlands 2 is still considered "recent"), I have to wait over a week at the earliest. I'm at a point now where I have caught up on older games, so I can't resort to ones I've missed anymore. I understand having to wait a couple of weeks for a new release to be available, but the most recent game in my queue is Far Cry 3 and that was over a month ago. Not only that, but shipping went from 2 days to 4-5 days over the past few months. Apparently they still have a Fast Return feature, but I haven't seen that happen for me in years, and when it did, it happened 1 out of every 10 times.

I'm still technically saving money because I still get 2-4 games a month, but it's gotten ridiculous. For a while, I was hoping Netflix would enter the market, but now I just wish something better to come along. I know there are ways to "cheat" the system -- like only having one game that's about to come out in your queue -- but I still need to play 5-6 games from last fall.

Being a new user is great because they want you to stay, but I've been with them for a while, and they have gotten enough of my money.

I didn't even think about trying to get new games from the service, I have been using it as a way to check out older games, exception xcom, that I may not have had time for or just wasn't sure if they would be in my "wheelhouse" so to speak. But I can see this being an issue if you are looking for the new hotness, guess it's just been better for me as a way to check out things I may have missed or not sure if I would like them(or in the case of ME3 just worried it would be horrible..it's not). I completely understand what you are talking about though and I could foresee becoming a bit burnt by the service, but even then after I have spent a good amount of time with some games though.

Man why am I talking about gamefly so much, just wanted to bring it up and now I'm on its tip....jesus I need to chill

@TooWalrus: Oh god WoW, man I have not played since the Pandas have been introduced but I want to, I WANT TO!

Just no time, or at least not enough time for WoW time.

@LaszloKovacs said:

I've also been a member for years and I've been happy with it. I understand it's not for everybody, but I never really got why the GB crew talk so much shit about it.

Because for a lot of people the service is shit. New releases always tend to have a long wait and they've been well known for having terrible shipping when it comes to sending out games in a timely fashion.

@Dallas_Raines said:

I was a longtime subscriber, but I stopped in July, they simply stopped shipping me anything. My q could be filled with old games with high availability and I'd be lucky to get one game every month.

Basically a whole lot of cases like this. The only thing I like about them is that they sell older games for really cheap but that doesn't benefit me cuz I never buy used. Cool that some get decent service and other people live close enough to a distribution center to get games faster than the norm.

gamefly is good for buying used games dirt cheap because they send you a flawless box/instruction manual with the game since they were never used

but if you try to rent from them,they never have new games in stock and the older games take 2 weeks to arrive so your trial/initial month is actually a one week window where you end up praying they get the returned game in time before you get charged for a followup month. (this has happened)

@wjb said:

I've been a subscriber for four years now, and I'm at a point where I'm not getting anything sent for days because everything in my queue is "low". If I want anything good from the past 4-5 months (apparently Sleeping Dogs and Borderlands 2 is still considered "recent"), I have to wait over a week at the earliest. I'm at a point now where I have caught up on older games, so I can't resort to ones I've missed anymore. I understand having to wait a couple of weeks for a new release to be available, but the most recent game in my queue is Far Cry 3 and that was over a month ago. Not only that, but shipping went from 2 days to 4-5 days over the past few months. Apparently they still have a Fast Return feature, but I haven't seen that happen for me in years, and when it did, it happened 1 out of every 10 times.

I'm still technically saving money because I still get 2-4 games a month, but it's gotten ridiculous. For a while, I was hoping Netflix would enter the market, but now I just wish something better to come along. I know there are ways to "cheat" the system -- like only having one game that's about to come out in your queue -- but I still need to play 5-6 games from last fall.

Being a new user is great because they want you to stay, but I've been with them for a while, and they have gotten enough of my money.

I don't want to be a dick, but considering you're just using the service so you don't have to buy the games at full price, you come off a bit whiny.

@MordeaniisChaos said:

@wjb said:

I've been a subscriber for four years now, and I'm at a point where I'm not getting anything sent for days because everything in my queue is "low". If I want anything good from the past 4-5 months (apparently Sleeping Dogs and Borderlands 2 is still considered "recent"), I have to wait over a week at the earliest. I'm at a point now where I have caught up on older games, so I can't resort to ones I've missed anymore. I understand having to wait a couple of weeks for a new release to be available, but the most recent game in my queue is Far Cry 3 and that was over a month ago. Not only that, but shipping went from 2 days to 4-5 days over the past few months. Apparently they still have a Fast Return feature, but I haven't seen that happen for me in years, and when it did, it happened 1 out of every 10 times.

I'm still technically saving money because I still get 2-4 games a month, but it's gotten ridiculous. For a while, I was hoping Netflix would enter the market, but now I just wish something better to come along. I know there are ways to "cheat" the system -- like only having one game that's about to come out in your queue -- but I still need to play 5-6 games from last fall.

Being a new user is great because they want you to stay, but I've been with them for a while, and they have gotten enough of my money.

I don't want to be a dick, but considering you're just using the service so you don't have to buy the games at full price, you come off a bit whiny.

Maybe, but I was more trying to let him know why some people might dislike the service. It's great if you're like him and check out all the games you miss from years ago, but Gamefly is doing the same thing Blockbuster did in the past and failed: advertise new titles that they don't have for the majority of the people. Netflix had the right idea and only focused their advertising on how big their library was or their streaming service -- stuff they can guarantee (unless the streaming doesn't work).

I buy games, but I don't have the money or the messed up priorities to buy just games. I don't want my place looking like Jeff's. I use the service for games I'm not sure I'm going to like or a game that has a 4 hour campaign and a multi-player I have no interest in anymore. I used Far Cry 3 as an example (because I'm not 100% I'm going to like it), but most of my queue is stuff that came out months ago. I waited weeks for them to finally send anything on my queue, and it was something that came out 5 months ago. Even Blockbuster years ago was never that bad. It's not like I'm getting mad that I have to wait weeks to play DMC so I don't have to buy it or anything else anymore. I thought my expectations were somewhat reasonable.

Either way, Gamefly is not a bad service like GB says (seriously, it's kind of hard to take some of them seriously as grown adults when they have something out for months and are too lazy to return it).

@MordeaniisChaos said:

@wjb said:

I've been a subscriber for four years now, and I'm at a point where I'm not getting anything sent for days because everything in my queue is "low". If I want anything good from the past 4-5 months (apparently Sleeping Dogs and Borderlands 2 is still considered "recent"), I have to wait over a week at the earliest. I'm at a point now where I have caught up on older games, so I can't resort to ones I've missed anymore. I understand having to wait a couple of weeks for a new release to be available, but the most recent game in my queue is Far Cry 3 and that was over a month ago. Not only that, but shipping went from 2 days to 4-5 days over the past few months. Apparently they still have a Fast Return feature, but I haven't seen that happen for me in years, and when it did, it happened 1 out of every 10 times.

I'm still technically saving money because I still get 2-4 games a month, but it's gotten ridiculous. For a while, I was hoping Netflix would enter the market, but now I just wish something better to come along. I know there are ways to "cheat" the system -- like only having one game that's about to come out in your queue -- but I still need to play 5-6 games from last fall.

Being a new user is great because they want you to stay, but I've been with them for a while, and they have gotten enough of my money.

I don't want to be a dick, but considering you're just using the service so you don't have to buy the games at full price, you come off a bit whiny.

Yeah, fuck the paying customer.

@Flacracker: Isn't the cost of gamefly for a month less than the price of a retail game? Hard to complain as long as it works and he gets the cheap games. I'm ok with not giving a damn because some guy feels his money is better sent to someone exploiting the people who make games, but he wants to complain it isn't quite fast enough. If he wants his games quick, he should try spending more than a few dollars a piece to play em. Plenty of people have to wait more than a week and pay well past full retail price to get their games. I'm just a little less accepting of the sissy ass whining people tend to do about silly things. No shit you're getting games later than if you just bought em. Don't wanna keep em around? Put the ones you don't want in a box, when the box is full, trade em in at the local brick and mortar or send em into Amazon. You're saving a great deal of money, and yeah, you're waiting. Cause and effect.

@videogamesarenotart said:

gamefly is good for buying used games dirt cheap because they send you a flawless box/instruction manual with the game since they were never used

but if you try to rent from them,they never have new games in stock and the older games take 2 weeks to arrive so your trial/initial month is actually a one week window where you end up praying they get the returned game in time before you get charged for a followup month. (this has happened)

I don't think it's really fair to complain if you're just trying to use the trial to get cheap games lol.

@NoK: Yeah, I've been a member for years and years now. My only beef with them is their horrible stock on new titles. They go from "Available" to "Very Low" in a single day, which tells me that they don't keep a great stock or are VERY poorly prepared. And to be fair, I still get 'em within around a week.

• Here in the UK we have 'Lovefilm' - 9.99 a month and you can play any game as long as you want, and have 2 at a time.
  
  
  • They have never once failed to get a brand new game to me on release day - God bless the UK Royal Mail.
  • Literally only spent money on XBLA games for the past two years. In 2012 I played 48 retail games, many brand new that day.
  • If the next-gen consoles lock out used games, I am well and truly fucked.

I had an account years ago and just grew tired of them not having any of the top 3 games in my queue ready and ended up sending me something way down my queue so I cancelled. I'm sure they've gotten better, but have no interest in going back. Now I just use them to buy older used games.