Comments on: Gamestop flogging "download insurance"

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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

By: Stooge

Stooge — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: snsr

snsr — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft’s download process for Office Mac 2011 is similarly outdated and ridiculous – one time only downloads, and you have to purchase the right to re-download.

By: grimc

grimc — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: styrofoam

styrofoam — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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

By: teapot

teapot — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

BT – My free, personal download insurance

By: LOLvis

LOLvis — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

the download insurance also EXPIRES after 18 months

By: Wickedashtray

Wickedashtray — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: asuffield

asuffield — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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?

By: OrcOnTheEndOfMyFork

OrcOnTheEndOfMyFork — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Didn’t buy the insurance?

“The connection was reset.”

Sucker!

By: leebenningfield

leebenningfield — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: CatherineCC

CatherineCC — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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

By: Rob Beschizza

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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

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