Counterfeit Games at Best Buy?? (Splinter Cell:PT)

Camman

I went to best buy today and had $60 in gift certificates and so I wanted to get a new game. I really liked metal gear solid long ago and I havent played a stealth game in a long time so I picked up Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow for $40. The packaging was very strange, says PC GAMING on the side and was in a DVD case, they had a whole rack like this seperate from the regular games in boxes. So I didn't think much of it.

Brought it home, opened it up, no manual inside Just a card with install instructions and the first 2 CDs are double stacked on the thing that holds them in, 3rd disc is in a sleeve tossed in there. So I install it, all goes well, I play single player for a while. i go to play multiplayer and it asks for a CD key. I look all over the box, even take the sleeve insert out of the DVD cover, no key.

So I looked around on the web and UbiSoft's site for similar cases, not much to be found. I emailed UbiSoft and hopefully they will get back to me on what I should do. If they can't solve it, I'll be returning it to best buy. Normally I would have though well maybe it was a mistake and they forgot to put the key in the box and just bring it back, but, with the lack of manual (there was a PDF document on one of the discs with like a scanned version of the manual) and the weird packaging that looked unprofessional, I wonder if something screwy is going on. Here's pics of what the box/discs looks like, you decide for yourself, im not sure what to do, waiting hear back from Ubi.

Thrax

I dunno.. The disks look legit, but then again, counterfeits are getting better and better.

madmat

I wonder if the key was printed on the manual and you ended up buying a copy that the manual was not put in by mistake and missed in QC.

Stuff ike that does happen, I've gotten sealed software with stuff like DVD-ROMs that they failed to put the key label on.

flyrice

It's probably a mispacked item. Corporate chains and retailers, and the major publishers, would never want to pull this stunt...too many liabilities and possibly accusations of fraud for a few extra bucks.

I suggest you take it back and even exchange it.

Now if you go to some mom & pop or hole-in-the-wall store, then you're on your own.

pseudonym

My first copy of call of Duty didn't have the key in it, had to go back and get another. The packaging is weird though, but they could just be trying to commonize the console and PC boxes.

tmh88

I bought a game for ps2 (grand turismo 3), and the game wasnt even burned to the cd. The disc was painted and all, came with manual and everything else, got it from bestbuy. I guess it was a factory mess-up, but the game wanst even copied to the cd.

tmh88

If it came from bestbuy i doubt its a fake

primesuspect

It looks grey market to me. Like when you buy a video card sometimes it comes bundled with a game. Look carefully at the packaging insert. Does it look screen printed or does it look like it came off a nice laser printer?

My guess is OEM game put into home-made (or at least not factory-pressed) packaging.

tcith

It's not unusual for excess OEM games/software to be repackaged for individual sale by the distributor.

Note - this has to be legit repackaging with approval from the original licence holder, the above pictures look exactly like that.

primesuspect

I do have a very important question, however:

flyrice

I'm not sure if most OEM games have a UPC code on them, but usually (from my experience in retail), if it's to be sold separately, it gets a UPC. If it's a package deal, it gets no barcode.

Also consider that some people actually take the effort of swapping discs and returning the product back faulty and/or missing parts and they have access to a shrink-wrap machine so that retail chains can just restock them and assume they're fine.