ARGHH Game

A couple of weeks ago I was informed that my local Game was closing for a month, not permanently though, it will be reopening as a GameStation.

Not a major change, or so I thought, apparently they will have better pre-owned prices and a wider range of accessories.

But yesterday the thought struck me.. My pre-orders?!, what will become of them?.

I pre-order a lot of games each month, the last time I left Game with a pre-order list the receipt was nearly 3ft long. Battlefield 3, Dead Island, Skyrim, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Pro Cycling Manager 5 (my friend on the counter added a load of random games to see if I would notice)

I also had a paid deposit for Gears Of War: Epic Edition, what would happen to all of these?

So I went in to ask, and I did not like what I was told.

"all pre-orders have been allocated to the nearest Game store"

With my local game changing, the nearest one is now a 40 minute train trip away, which defeats the purpose of me pre-ordering in my own town.

In all honesty I don't have a big problem with it, but I don't want to pay out for a train ticket just to pick up a game.

Luckily I managed to find the pre-order slip for Gears of War 3, and got my deposit back. But what of other shoppers who haven't asked about their orders?

I would love to hear the customer support calls when the change happens and everyone who has pre-orders gets told to go to Exeter to pick them up.

Online Passes, Good or Bad?

Online passes, the current initiative by games companies to get gamers to buy games new over pre-owned is a thorny subject to some people.

99% of the games I buy are new, my pre-owned buys are limited to the games I have a slight interest in but have no intention of paying the £40 price tag for.

Essentially the pass locks out specific gameplay functions, multiplayer in most cases, or added maps. Personally I don't believe it is needed to punish gamers for buying pre-owned, not everyone can rush out and buy the latest games at full price.

I can understand the idea behind it, when a game is bought new a percentage of the selling price goes back to the developers, when a game is bought pre-owned the developers see nothing of the sale.

Obviously developers want to get something for every copy of their game sold, and the passes help towards that.

But if I want to buy a game pre-owned, why should then have to pay out extra on top of that? Why should gamers who buy a game for the online aspect be forced to pay extra to go online?

I'll admit because of this my game collection is at a decent size, the majority if the games I have bought over the last few months have needed the pass for online play, and I could not bring myself to be responsible for causing someone else to pay extra to go online due to my trade in.