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| Liz Maas |
I bet you weren't expecting this kind of conspiracy when you picked up the game.
08.24.11 - 11:16 PM
Gaming retail giant GameStop has long been accused of all sorts of shady business practices, but this might take the cake. On the day of the release of Square Enix and Eidos Montréal's Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the company apparently sent out a memo to all its store employees telling them to remove OnLive codes from all PC retail copies of the game, which were packaged inside. While this doesn't tamper with the game itself - unless you had your heart set on playing the OnLive version - this also has gamers buying the game at full price for an opened copy. That, of course, is already a practice GameStop has often been criticized for in the past.
Neither Square Enix nor Eidos Montréal have commented, but GameStop issued a statement on their FaceBook page earlier this afternoon which did pretty much nothing to quell all that outrage. The retailer claims Square Enix put in the codes without their knowledge. GameStop, who recently purchased Impulse, a digital download service, sees OnLive, a digital streaming service, as a competitor.
It'll be interesting to see if GameStop continues the practice and whether Square Enix will respond or react. Other retailers, of course, still have the OnLive codes included in the PC version of Human Revolution.
