“ReleaseGate” continues as a handful of Gamestop stores have released both Assassin’s Creed 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 prior to the official street date. Kotaku reports store employees have confirmed that the pre-release date sales were authorized by Gamestop corporate in response to other stores in the same area in Jersey City. This comes hot on the heels of last week’s Modern Warfare 2 broken street date.
The Gamestop stores involved called their preorder customers to tell them their preorder was ready for pick up. Early releases are becoming common practice for Gamestop in an effort to preserve their precious preorders from canceling and purchasing the game at the competition in advance of the street date. Gamestop is taking the stance that two wrongs makes a right and selling before the street date when their competition did so first should be an acceptable practice. I hate to say it, but an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and if these kids aren’t disciplined street dates are may to be broken more and more and earlier and earlier.
It’s also possible that the publishers don’t mind the street date being broken by a day or two. It creates buzz surrounding the high demand for the game and punishing retail stores would probably involve restricting their access to your games and cutting the visibility of your game. It’s probably not worth the effort but the publishers probably won’t let it get out of hand if it means it’s starting a war among their retail partners.
Is Gamestop in the right when they break the release date to match their competition? Are game publishers going to be able to control their game release dates? What punishments could they dish out to the retail stores to make them respect their authoritah!? The stores would have to pass down an equally tough punishment the responsible employee/manager.
Either publishers will lay the smack down on the retail stores responsible or we’ll be hearing this same news story for every pre-ordered big name release from now on.
Assassin’s Creed 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 officially release November 17th at midnight at participating locations unless you live in Jersey City.
Source: Kotaku
