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The Pikmin 3 GameStop incident refers to an incident involving a GameStop promotion for an early digital download of Pikmin 3, which occurred on August 3rd, 2013.
History
On July 15th, 2013, GameSpot's and Nintendo of America's YouTube accounts had an identical video uploaded to them, in which Reggie Fils-Amie, CEO of Nintendo of America, provided details on an upcoming event to be held at select GameStop locations in the USA, and select EB Games locations in Canada, which would occur from July 20th, 2013 to July 21st, 2013. Those locations had a Pikmin 3 demo booth installed, run by a Nintendo representative, where players could play an exclusive version of the Tropical Forest map.
Attendees who pre-purchased Pikmin 3 at the event would not receive a physical copy of the game, but rather a special download code that could be redeemed on August 3rd, 2013, allowing them to get the game a day before its official release. The code was to be sent to their GameStop membership inboxes on 11:59PM of August 2nd, 2013.
On that same day, many attendees awoke to find their inboxes empty, and returned to the GameStop locations to assess the problem. GameStop addressed the situation, apologizing and explaining that an error had caused 3 different SKUs for the same item to be made, with those who pre-purchased the game being randomly assigned one of the three, which was printed onto their purchase receipts. Since these SKUs were used to randomly generate the download codes for the early release, this caused several problems for attendees who hoped to get the game early.
Faulty SKUs
The faulty SKUS were the cause of the incident. It is estimated that most people received the first, while about a third have received the second SKU. Only a few known reports of the third one have been found. The following SKUs existed, sorted here in a non-official order.
- The first of the three SKUs was normal; customers that received this unit got their download code without a problem and obtained the game early.
- The second SKU was accidentally listed as the download code sale, but was actually meant for the physical copy of the game, meaning that people who were assigned this SKU were unable to receive their game early and had to wait until the following day.
- The third SKU was meant to be for the physical copy of the game, but was accidentally listed for the retail copy of the game. Since the SKU involved with the early download code was programmed to no longer work after August 3rd, 2013, attendees who were assigned this SKU tried to return to GameStop in hopes of getting the physical copy instead. However, because the SKU no longer worked, the registers at GameStop kept reading the attempted purchase change as an out-of-stock item. Fortunately, those who made the pre-purchase on July 21st, 2013 were able to get a refund, due to the fact that the maximum number of days before refunds are no longer allowed at GameStop is 15. However, this also meant that those who pre-ordered the game on July 20th, the first day of the event, were unable to get a refund, effectively having to pay for the game twice.
Aftermath
Shortly after this unfortunate event occurred, many angry gamers who fell victim to the event took to social media and online forums, making others aware of the occurrence. Many blamed GameStop's faulty download-code system and their apparent ambivalence towards the situation, while others blamed Nintendo themselves. Since then, Nintendo removed the original video detailing the event from their YouTube account. However, GameSpot's upload of the video remained online, and is still up to this day.[1]