Curse Ye GameStop Used Stickers!

From: http://newenggamer.wordpres...

Having just recently written a post about the woes of having a huge backlog of video games, I paid a trip to GameStop for a bit of shopping. Okay, before you criticize, know that it was funded by an outside sponsor. I did my mother-in-law a favor, and she, feeling gratious handed me forty bucks and told me to buy a video game. Who was I to turn down her generosity?

Any ways, I only spent about twenty at GameStop. I bought three games: X-Men Legends (PS2), R-Type Command (PSP), and Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony. The other twenty went toward buying myself a used collection of Ultimate Spider-Man, and my wife a UK Cosmo.

I haven’t played the games yet, being nose deep in a slew of others that I intend to finish, but I did do one thing. I removed the price stickers.

Now I can understand having these. After all, how am I supposed to tell how the game costs otherwise? That said, GameStop goes insane with these. On X-Men: Legends alone I removed one from the front, one from back and one from the paper cover art itself. R-Type and Dungeon Siege were both similar experiences. Sometimes I’m able to do this without causing much damage to the cover art. This time however, both Legends and R-Type suffered tears as I peeled the stickers off the paper art. I’m still trying to remove residue from the plastic on three games.

I have to wonder why GameStop does this. Is one sticker not enough? Is it that important that we know a game is used that they have to plaster it on every possible surface? Are they afraid that inept clerks may not be able to find the barcode?

Now, I am not a GameStop hater. Do they overcharge for used merchandise? Yes. Do they underpay when buying used merchandise? Indeedily. That said, I know all this walking into the store. I know about the low wages they pay their employees and about the almost cult-like secrecy they require of their employees. Just the other day, I went in acting all like the big journalist I purport myself to be and had a question rebuffed on account of company hush orders.

I know all this and I shop there any ways. The people running my local GameStop are generally nice and knowledgable. Shopping online may be a more fiscally sound alternative, but there’s just something about the experience of physically browsing that is satisfying. Not to mention I am a huge fan of instant gratification and am often willing to pony up the extra cash if it means waiting a day or two less.

[WildArmed]

My gamestop just puts the stickers under the case w/o sticking them onto anything..
They don't peel the back off the sticker so it's nice and clean when I buy my used games.. (it's kinda important to me!) lol i'm OCD about clean covers and games :D

[Chaostar]

Here in the UK a chain of stores called Grainger Games used to put stickers right on the discs themselves! (top of the disc) After numerous complaints from myself and probably a lot of other people they stopped the horrid practice and went back to just stickers on the front/back. Eventually they took this further and made all their stickers easy peel like on greeting cards, however with this came the mistaken assumtion that they could stick more and more all over the box and manuals etc. You can't win everytime but in this case complaining helped a lot ;P

[Max Power]

Take everything out of the case, don't forget the paper cover in the sleeve, and use rubbing alcohol to remove the adhesive.