GameStop steals free games from its customers

Two years ago, I apologized to GameStop and its employees for buying consoles that used web-based app stores to sell games because they would ultimately render the physical video game retail store irrelevant.

Today, I'm withdrawing that apology.

PC versions of the new game Deus Ex: Human Revolution come with a coupon for a bonus version of the game for free on OnLive, a "cloud" gaming platform where gamers can play PC games over a strong internet connection and little else.

OnLive's medialess content delivery is a major threat to GameStop's livelihood because it lets users purchase and play games without ever having to buy a disc or console or anything.

For this reason, GameStop employees were ordered to open their copies of Deus Ex and throw away the OnLive vouchers.

"Square Enix packed the competitor's coupon with our Deus Ex: Human Revolution product without our prior knowledge and we did pull and discard these coupons," GameStop representative Beth Sharum confirmed in a message to the blog OnLive Spot.

Even though opening games and repackaging the contents of the box is a long-standing part of GameStop's retail tradition, never has it been so malicious.

I've been using OnLive for about six months and I can honestly say it amazes me every time I turn it on. I'm fortunate enough to live in a region of the United States that has adequate broadband for using bandwidth-heavy services like OnLive, and being able to play a full version of a PC game on my TV with a console that is little more than a network card is still a thrill to me. No one else does it.

So GameStop calling OnLive a "competitor" makes me laugh.

Of course, earlier this year, GameStop did acquire Spawn Labs for its peer-to-peer streaming game delivery technology, but it has not launched anything from this acquisition yet.

So when GameStop actually offers a novel content delivery method as…dare I say it…whimsical as OnLive, then it will be in a place to call it a competitor. But right now, it's just showing its inflexibility and stealing a product from their customers that Square Enix and OnLive wanted to give them.