Google “GameStop questionable practices” and you’ll find anecdote after anecdote about how GameStop employees screw over the average consumer. We’ve all seen it, we’ve all been affected by it. Yet the retailer reports quarter after quarter of increased profits in seemingly unstoppable fashion.

I recently went to the largest (in sales) area store to peruse the PC selection, and I was sickened by what I found. Some of this I’ve been seeing for years, some are just now evident, but it’s inspired me to sum up my experiences.

The practice of their used game policy is probably the most controversial. Every gamer feels slighted when GameStop buys a game for $1 that they turn around and sell for $20. The problem is, people keep selling games to them knowing this. The margins are huge, and although I applaud GameStop for successfully turning over games at such a profit, I don’t support it. Even more, I hate seeing used games on the shelves without box or manual, for only $5 off MSRP, knowing they bought them from consumers for pennies on the dollar. I avoid used game-only titles like the plague, but apparently someone is buying them because GameStop keeps taking them for trade.

There’s no question GameStop employees take games from the store to play at home. What kills me is that they still sell these as new, either as an unsealed “display” copy or deceivingly repackaged to appear as sealed to an unsuspecting consumer. Today I saw a display in the store with a bin of games marked “Final Clearance”, where most of the games were outright used or unsealed and marked as new.

Being back in the market for PC games, I decided to peruse their selection for some bargains. What I found were two shelves of “new” PC titles, all of which had the stickers sealing the boxes cut. Effectively, each one of these titles were opened, but were being sold as new. And it never fails, regardless of which GameStop store I go to, dating back to when EB Games existed, every PC game box on the shelf looks like it was peddled by a street vendor – weathered, kicked around and generally abused.

I don’t mind getting hounded for trade-ins and pre-orders, because frankly I know better than that to be bothered by it. If I absolutely need a game the hour it gets released, I’ll pre-order; otherwise I can just stroll down to the local Best Buy where they have an ample supply of new releases on hand. The problem is that the average consumer, aka soccer moms, isn’t as educated, so maybe exposing GameStop’s business practices for what they are isn’t enough – a targeted approach of spreading knowledge to these individuals might be more appropriate.

With my recent experience specifically, I am now more inclined to purchase a PC title from an online retailer like Amazon or GoGamer, or download through Steam and cut out the middleman entirely. It’s almost as if GameStop is more of a disservice to PC game developers and small publishers. The good news is it hasn’t deterred my PC game purchases; rather it has made me seek out more acceptable means of procuring my fix.