On the Exquisite Stupidity of GameStop Planning to Make Pre-Orders Even More Terrible

Can GameStop possibly become a worse corporate entity? Let's find out!

As GameStop continues its slow,inevitable decline into irrelevancy, the corporate entity most notable for stinking of Auntie Anne's soft pretzels and indentured minimum wage servitude has finally figured out a way to staunch the financial hemorrhaging of their nearly obsolete business model.

The answer to all of GameStop's woes? Getting into bed with video game publishers earlier in a game's development cycle to ensure the release of exclusive pre-order content through GameStop purchases. You may be asking yourself, 'Don't they already do that?' and you'd be correct. Partly.

Sure, exclusive content for titles pre-ordered through GameStop already exist, but most of that content is limited to skins or an extra map or two. And while I love being able to plaster my AR-15 with decorative pot emblems, I'm not heading to my local GameStop to pre-order a title to ensure I'm the first one with a cosmetic throwaway.


GameStop hopes to become directly involved in the development process to ensure further exclusivity to larger parts of games and offer them to customers as pre-order bonuses. According to Venture Beat,  GameStop met with Investment Company R.W. Baird to discuss the retailer's future in a landscape where both retail outlets and physical media itself are both facing an inevitable decline. According to Baird,

"For example, by offering exclusive content on each major game release, and longer term, future models may include GameStop offering exclusive gameplay."

Baird suggested that GameStop is looking at "getting involved at the time of game development where there could be some content exclusive to [the retailer] included in the game".

A GameStop spokesperson further clarified: "We are working with our [development] partners to build in a longer lead time. We are working with them to get both physical and digital exclusives for our customers."

What does that mean for you? Well, depending on how cozy this relationship becomes with a publisher, you could see an EA or an Ubisoft expanding pre-order bonuses from a few inconsequential in-game expansions to major portions of a title locked behind a literal brick-and-mortar paywall. Considering that EA would happily shaft gamers to increase their bottom line, this is a particularly shitty prospect. Making the game, or significant portions of the game, unavailable elsewhere would ensure GameStop an increased portion of market sales when a game drops. 

How do you, the customer, help stop something like this from taking hold? Vote with your wallet and stop pre-ordering games. Easy as that. Publishers and retailers wouldn't be working so hard to use pre-orders as a wedge that separates you from content if there wasn't already so much damn money in it. Take for instance the Watch Dogs pre-order matrix of fuckery we were privy to earlier this year.

Other than looking like the shittiest version of Tetris ever made, this perfectly captures everything that's wrong with pre-orders as business model. When the fuck would anyone pay extra to get access to the Watch Dogs Original Soundtrack? But someone did and as long as people keep pre-ordering titles, publishers will keep coming up with ways to shave content out of a game, repack it, and sell it back to consumers. 

Seriously, when was the last time you were in a mall?

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