GameStop customers: your online voucher is in the trash

Many stores promote a new video game by offering something extra, such as exclusive downloadable content or some sort of promotional gift. At GameStop it turns out you don’t get something extra — you get something less.

The PC edition of the newly-released Deus Ex: Human Revolution contains a voucher that allows buyers to play the game free of charge through OnLive, an online gaming service. It’s a promotional tie-in designed to encourage players to give the service a tryout and potentially sign up to play other games.

Unfortunately if you buy at GameStop, you aren’t getting the voucher. That’s because management have issued a memo ordering staff to open every copy, take out the voucher and toss it in the trash.

Confronted with the memo, GameStop confirmed the policy and later explained ” We pulled the coupons because, like all retailers, we prefer not to promote our competitors and their competing offerings and services in our stores. Unfortunately, the coupon was packed without our prior knowledge.”

It’s reported GameStop is working on its own online gaming service, which explains its rationale for the move. But you do have to wonder how far that logic can go. If the voucher had been printed in the game manual, would GameStop have asked staff to tear it out?

And would such tactics be considered acceptable elsewhere? If a magazine contains a voucher for a free trial of an online subscription to a digital edition, would newsstand operators be justified in removing the voucher before putting the issue on the shelves?

While GameStop’s logic may make sense, I think it’s crossed a line here. It’s one thing for a company to refuse to actively go out of its way to promote something that may be seen as competition. But in this situation it wasn’t asked to make any additional effort, and instead has actively worsened the experience for its customers.

UPDATE 2011-08-26 21:04 EST: Since we wrote this story, Gamestop has announced users who bought the game only to find the voucher had been removed will receive compensation in the form of a $50 gift card and the option to buy two used games for the price of one. It’s also issued a statement to customers noting “We regret the events surrounding this title release and that our customers were put in the middle of this issue between GameStop and Square Enix, the publisher of this game. And for this, we are truly sorry.”



Cosplay for a Cause Calendar [Gallery]

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The earthquake, tsunami, and ensuing nuclear crisis in Japan earlier this year have stretched the Japanese Red Cross to its limits; while donations are coming in all the time, it’s still important to maintain support for the organization as Japan recovers from these events. To help bolster contributions to the JRC, Cosplay for a Cause is launching an exclusive calendar with 18 professional never-before-seen photographs of internationally-known cosplayers and original monthly chibis by acclaimed comics artists.

With the terrible events that happened in Japan on March 11th, 2011, and continuing repercussions, Cosplayers from all over the world have come together to support the country that has inspired them.

Cosplay for a Causes’ mission is to use our love of costuming to raise money for the Japanese Red Cross Society to assist in Japan’s Disaster relief aid. We are currently offering a 2012 calendar which contains international cosplayers with many never before seen photos. 100% of all our proceeds will be going to the Japanese Red Cross society.

These are the teaser photos, which differ from the contents of the calendar. You can read more about the contents and artists and preorder your calendar ($17.99) on the Cosplay for a Cause website, or pick one up during Dragoncon, NyCC or AWA at the Cosplay for a Cause booth.

 



Deleted Video Game Scenes

Sometimes the premise of a game is so absurd you have to have missed something. That, or designers were all, “Plot? Plausibility? I’m not even worried about that stuff. Hey, do we need more or less zombies?”

Cracked asked readers to submit deleted scenes from video games that might help explain just exactly what’s going on. There are a few here:

#14 by blybug:

#10 by JonChacon

#8 by rippletron

Check out the rest on Cracked.

Twaggies Crowdsourced Webcomic

Here are some of the latest and greatest cartoons from our friends over at Twaggies.com. You tweet, they draw! Make sure you follow them on Twitter and Facebook to get your daily Twags!

 

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The Spinning Stingray Illusion [Video]

You’ve likely seen the spinning dancer illusion, which tricks the brain into believing the dancer is spinning either way without actually changing rotation. Now, this new animation by psychophysiologist Marcel de Heer shows that a single moving image can appear to move in three different ways. It’s a little psychedelic, but strong visual contrast is part of the illusion. Watch:

According to de Heer, most people will see [the stingrays] swimming up and down, with their tail always away from us. But in the middle of the animation, as the stingrays turn sideways, their true motion is revealed. The one on the left was actually rotating clockwise while the one on the right was turning counterclockwise. Did you see them spinning or swimming?

When we look around us, our visual system assesses the angle of objects to infer the perspective of the scene. But because of the stingrays’ shape and two-dimensional striped pattern, it’s hard to determine the point of view. This leads to ambiguous motion perception with several plausible alternatives. If you watch this animation for long enough, the stingrays’ motion may even flip between the different possibilities.

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Freaked-Out Lampreys Are Freaky [Video]

How do you control an invasive species–especially a parasitic one–without having to physically remove every specimen from an area? It’s a good question, and a hard one to answer. The ramifications of controlling one animal almost always include serious decline in another, damage and contamination to a habitat and possible immunity in the case of chemical control agents.

In the case of lampreys in the Great Lakes, which attack trout and other fish important to local economies, the answer may be to just freak them right the hell out.

Michael Wagner of Michigan State University exposed a group of lampreys to a mixture of chemicals from putrefying carcasses and ethanol. Another group was subjected to a similar amount of plain ethanol as a control. The animals exposed to the death-scented chemicals jumped out of the tank with a panic-like response.

According to Wagner, repellants could be a better alternative to divert them since even tiny quantities can provoke a response. The smell of death could be used to form a chemical dam to steer lampreys away from environmentally-sensitive waterways. The chemicals could also be used to corral the animals into groups, making them easier to eliminate.

That “panic-like response”? Oh, it’s on video.

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