MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Online retail’s tendency to ship games early has irked its High Street rivals for years, but a new trick from GameStop hopes to protect the seller from accusations of early selling.
It appears that GameStop.co.uk has already shipped some copies of Gears of War 3, with some customers receiving the game on Saturday (September 17th).
However, the package also included a note with the following cheeky request:
Congratulations on your purchase of Gears of War 3 on www.gamestop.co.uk. Please note that this game should not be played until Midnight 19th September.”
In other words, if any cheeky scamp does dare to play the game clasped in their hands before the official release date, that’s up to them. Clever. And MCV is sure every single customer honoured the request.
In the interests of fairness, MCV should point out that GameStop is far from the only online retailer shipping games early.
Sites such as ShopTo have made a name for themselves by shipping games to customers the moment they arrive in stock, meaning they can quite often arrive several days ahead of the official release.
And many of the major online shops will routinely post game up to four days before release.
