GameStop Pauses Unlimited Used Games Program

After a soft launching earlier this calendar month , GameStop has suspended its upcoming PowerPass armed service , set to offer customers outright approach to used games for six calendar month . The program was in the beginning scheduled to fully launch in the coming week , with sign - ups to set about on November 19 .

Initial reports on the PowerPass programme explain that it would allow participant to fundamentally rent used titles from GameStop . ( Those titles would be fix to one offered at the store ’s forcible location , rather than through the chain ’s online stock list . ) PowerPass ’s $ 60 price - tag would cover six months of play and swapping , after which customers could select one preowned game to keep for good . Whether or not the program ’s specific will commute as a result of the pause remains undecipherable .

Related:Recent Video Games That Were Censored

Kotakureports that GameStop employees have been instructed to remove signage advertising PowerPass from storage . Additionally , a GameStop spokesperson toldKotakuthat those who have already purchased their membership through the voiced launching can receive a full repayment , and pick out a used game to keep for their problem . The same spokesperson also cater the following explanation of the suspension :

" We have elect to temporarily pause the axial motion out of the new PowerPass subscription service of process , base on a few programme limitations we have identify . We finger this is the right matter to do for now to ensure we are able to provide our guests an exceeding service . "

GameStop ’s entrance into the biz - lease market do amid the company ’s continue fiscal difficulties . The gradual and consistent trend away from physical game and toward digital one have strike the retail merchant firmly . Last March , against a backdrop of slouching sales and falling strain prices , GameStop announced that it would close up to 190 of its 6,600 + stores . The chain is undeniably feel the pain that has marked the retail industriousness more broadly in the age of digital commerce .

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo artwork showing Kulebra facing dark souls.

It ’s understandable for a new program to live hiccup as it approaches its launching - that ’s what soft launches are for , after all . However , by not announcing a reinstatement date for PowerPass ( and by being equivocal about why it was paused in the first place ) , GameStop has nurture a few flushed flags . Kotakureferences employees who speculated that GameStop ’s electronic computer infrastructure could n’t handle the programme . The"few programme limitations"that the GameStop spokesperson left undefined could be any number of thing : PowerPass ’s price , its length , the games customers can keep after the program expires , or anything else .