3rd Strike

So in short I wil classify myself as a gamer. I've been enjoying games since I was little and will continue to enjoy the hobby for a long time to come. As I've gotten older I will admit that my responsibilities have taken over much of the time that I would normally dedicate to playing a game. As they should. So in recent years as I've moved out of the college scene in to the "real world" I've become more of a collector.

Given my studies in Economics/Business I've become just as interested in the industry as I am with the game play. One industry leader that regularly makes headlines is Gamestop. After acquiring EBGames they've pretty much cornered the gaming retail market in the United States. And like a traditional monopolistic company they pretty much feel they have free reign to do what they like. They've received criticism from their "bend-over" bundles to their telemarketing-Esq style of marketing their buyback program (which sucks).

Up until a few years ago I haven't had a problem with Gamestop until I realized there 's a serious problem of how they handle used games. Gamestop is known to have very good deals when purchasing used games, a lot of stores have buy 2 get one free deals which can be hard to pass up if you're looking for a few titles at a low cost.

One situation that happend to me was back when God of War first came out. I purchased it used and realized that it was a defective copy. I was a bit surprised cause I thought they tested the games before they resold them for a price several times inflated from what they paid out. When I went to return it they store didn't have any more copies to replace it with. So I went to another store. This one had copies, but the crazy thing was this copy was also defective.

Frustrated I returned to the store and requested the credit option. This is where I got screwed. When I originally purchased the game it was 30 bucks, but in the time that I messing around with a busted copy, God of War became a "greatest hit" and the price dropped to 20 dollars. So I ended up losing money. I ended up using the store credit and purchased a new game, which thankfully worked just fine. Not only did I lose money but I ended up spending more.

The most recent incident happened last month when I purchased Street Fighter: Anniversary Collection. I wanted this game cause it was one of the only complications that had Street Fighter II: 3rd Strike, which is one of the best 2d fighting games out there. I ordered it online because it was difficult to acquire in a retail store, since it's an out of print game. Again used. Got the game only to realize that this one too was also defective. I called and was amazed at how smooth their return process was. The operator said that he would put in the request to have a replacement shipped once the original was returned. Time passed and I realized they didn't send out a replacement but refunded the full cost of the game. Slightly annoyed I just went to amazon and purchased a higher price for a new copy.

After this last situation I'm ever so conscious of purchasing used games from Gamestop and I will say that this is probably the 3rd Strike when dealing with this company.