Joystiq LGJ columnist Mark Methenitis has written a piece analyzing the claims posited earlier this week by Kotaku surrounding the legality of GameStop's employee "checkout policy" and found that, in his professional opinion, the illegality of this practice may be in question for a variety of reasons. The main question at hand: Is GameStop deceiving customers who purchase employee-played (read: "used") games as new? His answer: Much like most legal matters, it really depends.

Depends on what, you ask? For one, Methenitis says games sold at GameStop as new where, "the disc, packaging, or other materials are damaged in any way, or if one-time use download codes are used" could be "a deceptive act." The problem with minutiae such as this, he says, is that damages are so small (monetarily speaking) that a lawsuit would be ineffective in court. Furthermore, he says that laws put in place to protect consumers from used vs. new item fraud are often based on products that degrade rather than "nebulous" products like DVD discs and, to a greater extent, cartridge-based games (such as Nintendo DS titles).

With legal ambiguities surrounding this issue, we'd simply suggest buying used titles from your friendly, online click-and-order retailer in the meantime, rather than contributing to billions of dollars in used game sales at your own and other gamers' expense.

Your thoughts?

I don't like it, but there are other greater concerns than that for me.

I went to gamestop today, purchased a new PSP, and wanted to buy god of war chains of olympus, the guy told me they only had used copies, and I said I wanted a new one, and he kept insisting that used was the only thing available.

So I said ok then im not buying the psp, he then goes to the computer, and checks for availability, and apparently he says "We have it, sorry for the inconvenience", so guess what? He opened the drawer right in front of him, and around 10 copies (new copies) of god of war were there. Its pathetic to say the least, its as if he was forcing me to buy the used game.

On another note, I was trying to sell an OLD PSP, and they would give me $45 for it, then sell the same psp for $120..