Gamestop flogging "download insurance"

Internet connections and computer hardware being finicky things, you can download your games any time you please at Steam and Amazon. At Gamestop, you must buy "download Insurance" for the privilege—it's put in your cart automatically, just in case you forget. [Reddit]

• [Anonymous]

  This is all well and bad, but let’s not forget the most important question about gamestop: do they have battletoads?

• [snsr]

  Microsoft’s download process for Office Mac 2011 is similarly outdated and ridiculous – one time only downloads, and you have to purchase the right to re-download.

• [grimc]

  Read closely, and this is reasonable. See, Gamestop doesn’t just keep your purchase on record to allow you to re-download. They keep an entire “backup copy”. That takes a lot of storage space.

• [styrofoam]

  Of course, the weird thing in this instance is that the gamestop game was $5 cheaper than on valve. So even with download insurance, you’re saving a buck.

  Can’t imagine that’s standard, though. If gamestop games were consistently cheaper, and they tacked this on as a “make sure the tech illiterate customer makes su they realiize the value add.”
  Of course, it should still be declinable.

• [Anonymous]

  It’s so they become the lowest price at first glance… Much like disreputable eBay sellers with inflated shipping.

• [teapot]

  BT – My free, personal download insurance

• [LOLvis]

  Say, that’s a nice download you’ve got going there. Sure would be a shame if something *ahem* happened to it.

• [Anonymous]

  There’s a joke about this in Mass Effect 2.. pretty funny. Funnier.. I think EA does(or did?) the same thing..

  maybe they didn’t catch the line before the game shipped

• [Anonymous]

  the download insurance also EXPIRES after 18 months

• [Wickedashtray]

  I don’t know if they still do it but EA’s download app charged me an extra 10 bucks to have my copy of Crysis “held” so I could download it again in the future. The 10 bucks covered 2 years.

  That kind of abuse of a customer takes a special breed of white collar scumbag.

• [asuffield]

  I don’t really see a problem with it being optional, particularly when they give everybody a hefty shove towards buying it and the total price is the same.

  If they marketed it as “25% discount if you only download once”, who would complain?

• [OrcOnTheEndOfMyFork]

  Didn’t buy the insurance?

  “The connection was reset.”

  Sucker!

• [leebenningfield]

  One problem is that it seems the “insurance” price is the same for every game. $3.95 extra on a $50 game doesn’t seem like that much, but on a $5 game it almost doubles the price, which is ridiculous.

  I’m pretty sure that EA’s digital download store used to have a similar scheme, but at some point they removed it, because everybody complained about it.

  When almost every other digital download store allows unlimited future downloads for no extra cost, GameStop is not going to be able to keep up this practice for very long.

• [CatherineCC]

  I like how boingboing has basically been a reddit scraper lately.
  lol.

• [Rob Beschizza]

  http://www.reddit.com/domain/boingboing.net/

  Welcome to how the internet works, Catherine. Sites linking to each other!

  • [Stooge]

    What, spontaneously, of their own free will? Are you in fact a piece of bloatware that got rolled into the last MT upgrade? Is your full name Robot Beschizza?
    Enquiring minds need to know.