Tycho Seems to Have Figured it Out

To quote from Wednesday's Penny Arcade Newspost:

...when people pre-order Haze from EB Games in Canada, and then trade it back within a week, they'll be refunded the entire purchase price of the game - in store credit. It seems nonsensical at first, but that transformation of your money into the tokenized, internal currency is the key. They're virtually guaranteed to sell that traded in copy - only a week old - at their typical grasping rate. Even if the game isn't traded in, they still secured a preorder, one of each store's rated metrics. That game will now travel through the company's intestinal tract, sold and resold, until the disc is too scored to play - at this point, they will offer to sell you a Game Doctor scratch repair kit. Their deepest fear - what literally keeps them up at night - is that you won't trade your games in. They appear to have cracked the code.

It's another sleazy-sounding money making scheme from Gamestop (which owns EB, of course), but this time, at least they're doing the customer a favor at the same time. Despite the fact that they're basically the drug dealers of the electronic entertainment field, I still feel okay going there, because one of my dearest friends is a manager, and I like to support my friends. It's kinda like my thing about not going to Walmart before 10PM.

Don't worry, I still love you, Alex.