I still remember when I was little and
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble was just being released. My self-made video game money collecting envelope was burning a hole in my pocket as I waited patiently to pick up my reserved copy at the local Toys ‘R’ Us. Putting ten bucks down on a game was all I had to do in order to guarantee myself a copy the day it came out… well the day
after it came out, considering the release date is actually the shipping date, but nonetheless I was one ecstatic nine year old. Now fast forward about 13 years and I am now the man behind the counter at a Gamestop, attempting to afford college, and asking people if they want to reserve anything. Five dollars is all you need now to reserve the latest alien versus human space epic shooter. In fact, you do not even need your receipt anymore. Your local EB Gamestop has all your information saved on their respective computers, everything about you, even your birthday.
At around 11:55 pm toward the end of a delightful September’s day, a local Commerce Bank employee came into our store looking to reserve yet another one of these alien vs. human space epic shooters, which I believe goes by the name of
Halo 3. The game was going to be released in about five minutes, but paying for the full thing, all 63 dollars and 49 cents of it guaranteed him a quick pick-up after the clocked ticked to the next day. In order to take his reserve, and his money, I first needed to bring up his information. I asked for his phone number and received it. As a regular customer, his name came up as did any game he had reserved and has yet to pick up. At that moment I noticed something special, for him anyway, which was the fact that he had a fully paid-off copy of another alien versus human epic shooter, I believe called
Gears of War, and I could simply transfer the balance to
Halo 3 giving him what would now seem like a free game. He was overjoyed at the prospect of not having to shell out any of his hard earned cash and gladly accepted the balance transfer. After the transaction was complete, my manager took me aside and what she said changed my whole outlook on EB Gamestop forever.
EB Gamestop is a multimillion dollar corporation once owned by Barnes and Noble, but I always assumed that they were one of those
good monopolies… you know like… Febreeze. She brings me to the other computer and types in a couple of secret manager passwords which brings up a screen of released games with a number next to each one. She immediately scrolls down to Madden 08 and points at the number. “How many people have this game reserved?” she asked. I then realized that the number next to the game represents the people who still have the game reserved. “42”, I respond completely flabbergasted. She then said, “People often forget where they reserved a game, pick it up somewhere else, or just do not care. Now while corporate does not just come out and say it, they really do not like us to remind people they have things reserved that already passed because at the year anniversary of that game’s release date, the reserve sku and the money magically disappear.” Not knowing what to say next, I got extremely curious and asked her to scroll down to
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Gamecube, and to my astonishment there was still a shocking 99 reserves in our system that would disappear forever on December 3rd.
The reason why so many people never picked up this title was because it kept getting delayed until it finally switched systems to the Wii and then no one picked up their reserved copy of the GCN version. EB Gamestop must hold a happy dance-dance party whenever a game gets delayed (I’m looking at you
Grand Theft Auto IV). If we are to assume that each person only put five bucks down on
Twilight Princess GCN, it would amass to approximately 495 dollars (or as I like to think of it, the price of an 80 gig Playstation 3) of free money for EB Gamestop. Those numbers were just from our store, and there was an EB and a Gamestop in this mall (not to mention three more within a 15 mile radius around the mall).
Note: Now the consumer can still technically get their money back, it is just the reserve sku that disappears. However, with no game name next to the amount on the reserve, EB Gamestop employees rarely ever notice or tell the customer they still have Starfox64 on reserve. She then tells me, “Since he had a fully paid off copy of
Gears of War in our computers, what most likely happened is he picked up the game and paid for it in full but the cashier never properly cashed out the order”. So in this case I accidentally just
screwed over EB Gamestop, which at that moment I had no remorse for whatsoever. So here is EB Gamestop’s dirty little secret out and all over the internet. And this comes with a warning for all of you out there, for the next time you reserve your copy of the next epic alien versus big guy in suit videogame, take precaution and make sure you not only remember you have the game reserved, but also which of the 10,000 EB Gamestop locations you reserved it at!
Source:
GameStop’s Dirty Little Secret | The Exploding Barrel 
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