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Deus Ex: Human Revolution - GameStop Removing OnLive Coupons and More

I'll collect a couple of non-review Deus Ex: HR tidbits here, including the sensational news that GameStop has been opening boxes and physically removing the free OnLive coupon in each box. Ars Technica has the news, including a copy of the email to employees from the GameStop Field Operations Manager:

Quote:

We contacted Ivanoff on his business line and e-mail, and he refused to comment on the memo, instead asking us to take the issue up with public relations. GameStop spokesperson Beth Sharum confirmed the practice, telling Ars that "Square Enix packed the competitor’s coupon with our DXHR product without our prior knowledge and we did pull these coupons."

Thanks, jhwisner.
DX:HR was patched, quite possibly, before you played:

Quote:

An issue was found that caused some users to be unable to start the game on specific machines. Specifically, the presence of older ATI/AMD drivers, also on machines with NVidia hardware, would cause the game to crash on startup. This patch is a hot-fix for that particular issue. On top of this, it also increases the number of save-slots from 20, like on the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, to 99.

Joystiq points out a compilation video of the boss fights - I'd suggest this is very spoilery.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Alec Meer writes about his disconnect with the narrative - but how DX:HR still allows him to play the way he wants (spoilers for the early parts of the game):

Quote:

Please note: this includes some small spoilers, but none of them relate to the game’s core plot.
I am not Adam Jensen, and Adam Jensen is not me. Our goals are not aligned.
This is not a complaint. This is exactly why Deus Ex: Human Revolution has been the mainstream game I’ve been most obsessed with this year. Jensen’s goals are these: to avenge his girlfriend and to serve his employer. These goals change over time, and most importantly become far bigger than such comparatively petty interests. They also don’t get in the way of my goals.
My goals are these: find everything, upgrade everything, read everything, buy everything, hack everything, don’t kill anyone. I am free to do them, and I did them compulsively for tens of hours. At the same time, I’m not terribly invested in why I’m doing these things, from the game narrative’s point of my view. I want to know how it all plays out, but being a dutiful employee and a dutiful boyfriend – those are Adam Jensen’s goals, not mine.

More information.

I quit shopping at Gamestop years ago for this very reason - opening boxes then selling it as new. I bought my daughter a new Nintendo DS game that already had saved games on it when we opened it - obviously used. Another time they shorted my son a disc when he bought a multi-disc game. They made good on both, but still it required another trip to the store.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. Can they still sell an opened box as new? Since they opened the box and broke the seal, does that mean they agreed to the EULA, not you? If this is allowed, can a different store start opening boxes of children's cereal to take the toy out since that might compete with their own toy business?

It should be illegal to open new games. As its technically not new anymore once its opened. Don't forget there employes can take home new games to play and return. They have been doing this for years.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xian (Post 1061088796)

What I think might get them into hot water is not just that they opened and removed the item but that they gave the purchaser no way to know they had before purchasing it. Until the story broke someone would not have realized it was missing until they got home with the product; at this point it would be non-returnable regardless of whether or not the customer actually used it.

By their standards as well they have already removed the only indicator that might normally allow someone to return a game to their store; they broke the seal and opened the product. They consider such games to be used and so will only offer used game buyback and not refund the purchase price.

If anyone happens to stop by a Gamestop, you might want to check the boxes to see if they put one of their own seals on the game.

So they won't sell a game that has a trial coupon for a competitor in it but they have no problem selling a game that forces you to install and load a competitor's client?

A number of years ago Gamestop started taking the disks out of the boxes for loss prevention (theft). The RF ID tags kids just tore off the boxes and considering the target market it makes some sense. The worst problem this caused, of course, was employees ripping off the game keys.

This is like Steam not giving me a second copy of a game because I got it with a discount bundle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhwisner (Post 1061088802)

Until the story broke someone would not have realized it was missing until they got home with the product; at this point it would be non-returnable regardless of whether or not the customer actually used it.

Depending on what state you lived in I thought they typically gave you a week to return a game. I certainly did that with M&M9.

Blah blah blah.

If any of you expected an Onlive code and didn't get it, I just happened to have pre-ordered from Gamestop and didn't want an Onlive code and GOT one.

Want it? Ask.

One only, no guarantees it will work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucky Day (Post 1061088854)

Depending on what state you lived in I thought they typically gave you a week to return a game. I certainly did that with M&M9.

It's been a long time since they stopped doing that. I don't know of any retailer that gives refunds on open games now.

This Gamestop fiasco is getting big… it's even being reported on CNN now. Their popularity might take a huge hit from this ordeal. :evilgrin:

I have never bought anything from gamestop.

I've never liked their business practices and my only solution is to vote with my $$ so I have.

I pretty much buy everything from Amazon.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JDR13 (Post 1061088905)

That article says they are refusing to sell the game at all now until Square/Eidos sends them new copies without the coupon. The first week of release is a critical period when most of the sales will probably be made. If they are willing to give that up and get bad press just to throw some temper tantrum over a coupon that most people will probably never use anyway they really are dumbasses.

Gamestop having a version without Online could drastically shift sales to other retailers regardless of whether or not someone is likely to ever use the Onlive coupon.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_…decisions.html (relevant part is 11 minutes in)

Offering a clearly inferior option has pretty dramatic effects on decision making - regardless of whether or not the inferiority is significant.

^ Gamestop is the one refusing to sell copies with the coupon. They don't offer a streaming service yet, though they do offer a download service. Still, they aren't making Steamworks an issue but were willing to further damage their reputation over a coupon for a company that competes with a product they intend to offer well into the future but not currently. If anyone threw a tantrum over this it would be Gamestop.

Wow! My recent experience with GameStop was horrible. So now this totally bogus behavior. As others have said, Steam is online distribution, and they don't even have a streaming service similar to Online to compete. Someone at GameStop management has their head so far up their ass he can't find his way out (or maybe all of their management, considering how messed up my experience has been).

New patch just went live. 12.8 MB

http://store.steampowered.com/news/6146/

Quote:

This latest patch addresses:

- A frequent issue for AMD/ATI hardware users that can cause the game to crash on startup.
- Improvements to loading speed. The speed increase depends on machine spec and settings, but loading time improvements of over 50% have been measured on
some machines.

- Some control fixes:
- Diagonal movement is no longer faster as intended.
- Adjustments have been made to mouse sensitivity in response to user
feedback.
- Mouse sensitivity for X and Y axis can still be configured separately, but is
now consistent when set to default settings.
- The range of settings for mouse sensitivity has been adjusted to provide for
more accurate adjusting.
- The default mouse sensitivity has been altered to be somewhat less sensitive.

Great! Those loading times made trying different approaches (the game's forte) way to tedious and slow.

Now if only they allowed you to name your saves. I'm having trouble keeping track of what is what.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thrasher (Post 1061089008)

Great! Those loading times made trying different approaches (the game's forte) way to tedious and slow.

Agreed. I was trying different things and saving and loading a lot because of that and the load times got old really fast. Ironically, I saw someone on another forum claim the load times for the console versions were actually faster.

Quote:

Now if only they allowed you to name your saves. I'm having trouble keeping track of what is what.

The thumbnails are no help either. At first I thought 'Oh great, it took a snapshot of where I was at when I saved last' but then I realized it was just a generic image for that level which is no help. :p

Yeah! Those thumbnails threw me off. "Wait! I KNOW the last save is from a different area." I immediately thought bug, but it's probably an optimization.

BTW, I just did an update and test. I'd say loading times are about twice as fast. Barely acceptable on my system.