Its The Retailers fault, not anyones else!

[BlackMesaDude]

They got specific orders.. and by seeing some pictures it says "DO No Display until 16th" and they know perfectly well that you wont be able to unlock the game until then.

SO why the hell are they selling ? I hope VU or Valve sues thoose who did this, if they didnt do this we would not be in this deep shit were everyone who purchased a copy are mad at both valve and VU and are bashing every 5min on every hl2 forum there is.

FU Bestbuy and EBgames..... the list goes on.

 

[Revenge]

As a former retailer, I can tell you that most games arrive in-store with a "do not display until" slip of paper on them, and that from the moment you receive the stock until the moment you actually put the stock out is one long drawn out bundle of paranoid nerves because nobody wants to be the first to put it out and yet nobody wants to lose out on sales... In other words they all want to be the 2nd store to put it out, and I have had managers sending me in plainclothes to competing stores and ringing them up from my cellphone just to see if the games and consoles, etc were out and on sale yet or not...

Your average retail manager generally gives a rat's ass about games, generally because sales figures prove time and again that people who actually know about the games they are selling just scare customers off with jargon they don't understand. As such, chances are nobody in these stores realised they were selling non-functional product and frankly had no real way of finding out unless they were HL2 fans and already knew where to look... Which you wouldn't do, because you had been in the industry for a decade and new that stuff generally worked straight out of the box, and that even WinXP could be activated the instant you arrived home with it. And so, everybody went ahead business as usual, which was to present a facade of trying to respect the do not display date where in reality they are all looking to get the stock out ASAP and not get the blame for it.

Publishers know that is what retailers do, because it is what they have always done, for a very very long time. Half-Life 2 didn't get any special treatment at all from retailers in regards to breaking the street date.

 

[Darkside55]

I fail to see how this is a rumor and/or speculation, but I do concur. As I said in another thread just moments ago, people need to stop whining to VU and go complain to retailers--or better yet, shut up and not complain at all--instead.

 

[ukfluke]

yep totally agree.

 

[dj v]

OFF TOPIC: if i went a bought it from a store, would i be able to play counter strike source stright away?

 

[**CENSORED**]

I've heard that they get fined $10,000 every time they sell HL2 before Nov. 16.