Over at Aeropause, James Munn recounts his recent experience at his local Gamestop branch while trying to purchase a copy of Sid Meier's Pirates for the PSP. According to him, he specified that he wanted a new copy of the game, but that instead of receiving a sealed game case, he watched in shock as the clerk proceeded to "open the cabinet and lift out a Sid Meier's Pirates designed users manual" and he saw "him pop open an empty PSP case and slide it in".

This, of course, upset him, and he repeated to the clerk that he wanted a "new" one. However, he was told that what he was about to receive was indeed new. One of the store managers who eventually joined the discussion then informed him that, just as with a new item, he had seven days to exchange it for an identical item in case the one he got was defective. The manager then proceeded to offer to seal the game case with shrink wrap and a heat gun.

In his post, Munn points out that besides the apparent underhandedness of the whole situation, two things irked him the most. The first reason was the possibility that if he agreed to pay the full price for an unsealed game, "As soon as I walk out that door, my game is now devalued 80%." The second reason was that when the manager offered to shrink wrap his game for him so that it is now "new", he believes that this "effectively discredits the value of any sealed game in the entire store".

Normally, when we refer to a piece of merchandise as "new", we immediately expect it to be properly wrapped, with intact seals, stickers and other security devices which companies use to ensure that your item has not been tampered with before you bought it. Ideally, we should be the only ones who have laid hands on the item since it has left the factory.

On the other hand, commenters on Munn's post also bring up another side to the story, saying that this shouldn't be a problem as the practice which Munn has described is merely Gamestop's way of trying to curb the possibility of theft, which in turn equates to losses. Many have noted that the games are opened and the empty boxes are then left on display. Meanwhile, the contents of the game case are then placed in a sleeve and placed safely behind the counter until someone buys the game, and the disc and manual, and whatever else originally came with it, need to be placed back in its box.

While this may seem to be a plausible reason for this kind of practice, it has also raised questions on why Gamestop has to implement this sort of policy, instead of just keeping the sealed game cases behind glass, or maybe invest in the use of security tags so that the game's original packaging won't have to be tampered with at all. On top of that, consumers may also have good reason to doubt Gamestop's stand on this matter, as everyone is familiar with stories of brand new items bought at stores, which later turned out to be either obviously pre-owned, used, or worse, completely unusable.

Many have advised Munn to just stop buying from Gamestop completely, and just order games online since online retailers have more stringent rules in ensuring that a buyer receives the merchandise in perfect condition. Whether this would be the most apt solution to his predicament, we can't tell.

Out of curiosity though, we would like to ask everyone: if what happened to Munn also happened to you, would you find it acceptable, shrink wrap and all?