Best Buy kicked off a clearance sale yesterday in which a number of games released in the last year were marked down to as low as $5 each, but if you're just now finding out about the sale, then it's already too late for you. Cheap games tend to move fast at retail, but not because people are rabid to grab a new game to play for the weekend. It seems that a popular activity among some thrifty gamers is to buy as many games as they can carry on sale and then go down the road to Wal-Mart or another big box store and "return" the game to receive the full MSRP back in cash. It's not an illegal practice, but it sure does irritate me.
Finding deeply discounted video games is challenging enough sometimes, but buying up as many games on sale as possible just to trade them in down the street has got to be a form of cheating. Imagine waiting in line to buy tickets for a sports event. You're the second person in line and when the ticket window opens, the guy in front of you buys up all 40,000 tickets. If the guy had 39,999 friends he wanted to take to the event then you'd be annoyed, but at least the tickets were going to people who would enjoy the game. If, on the other hand, the guy announced he was taking all 40,000 tickets and selling them to a scalper who would then sell them back to the line at cost plus thirty percent, the ticket line would riot. It's a similar situation when buying a video game on sale as far as I'm concerned.
If you're really going to play that stack of cheap games, then by all means go ahead and stock up. If you're just out for a get rich quick scheme at the expense of other gamers, then you'd better hope that nobody finds out before you reach the check-out line. Cheat all you like in games, but please play fair in reality.
