I realize this has been done to death, but I was just made aware of something that I find to be painfully illegal.
I was browsing the GBA used section at my local GameStop (the no-box no-intstructions section), when I happened upon a copy of Yoshi's Island that looked...odd. There was a white box on the front of the kart label, outlined with a thin red line, and a deftly applied smear of indellable marker, thereby covering up the words "NOT FOR RESALE."
I asked the cleck (Aaron, a good friend of mine, and role-player extrodinare...that's pen and paper D&D ;) ) what the deal was. He said they get games like that all the time from corporate. Lo and behold, sitting right next to it was a copy of Wario Land 4, same white box, same red outline, same smear of Sharpie, though not well applied this time, as the bottom of the words "NOT FOR RESALE" could be seen.
He said those were not the worst example, and then pulled out a copy of Blood Rayne for the GameCube...still contained within it's factory wrap of celophane, aside from one area. A not-so-neat square was cut with a utility knife out of the back, right over the UPC. Covering up the UPC was a used price label and bar-code.
They were selling obviously new product as used...and commiting fraud all the while.
To compound this lapse in legal action, the games that they do this with are free, sent from the producer straight to personel who work for GameStop in high-up positions. These personel then shrink them into inventory as used product, mangle the factory wrap and slap a used sticker on it, and sell it to the public. The producer of these games do not see any money from those sales, as they were unintended for retail. That's software piracy, on an extremely grand scale.
My jaw dropped as I found this out. I believe something needs to be done.
