Is there anywhere to rent games any more?

[Forest Dweller]

Gamefly is shit. They would be great if they had netflix's turnaround, but instead they'll send you a game and charge you full price before you even receive it.

Wat. Explain please.

Gamefly only has a couple of distribution centers unlike netflix, which means for most places it takes a long time to for games to circulate. If you take too long to send something back, they'll think you're trying to keep it and charge you for it. Around christmas season it can take 2 weeks for them to receive a game, and they have a problem with items getting lost or destroyed in the mail so (occasionally) you can get charged for something you haven't received yet. I don't know if they still do that but more recent users said they're only getting 3 games a month.

Another thing, their discs are scratched to hell and sometimes unreadable.

Holy shit. Thanks for the heads up, I was thinking of subscribing to them in the hopes that it would be cheaper than $7.99 rentals considering how fast you can go through most console games. But what you describe sounds like shit. I guess I'll stick with Hastings rentals for now. The only problem is that there were some PS2 games on Gamefly that weren't available at rental stores.

Their distribution centers are listed as LA, Austin, Tampa, and Pittsburg. Austin is good for me since I live in Texas, though I'm very likely moving to Kentucky for this coming fall, which wouldn't be close to any of them. Where did you live when you had your subscription, and how long ago was this?

 

[I.C. Wiener]

In Colorado Springs (early 2008, I'd have to dig through my old email account for an exact date) it was pretty much unusable. Then in Las Vegas it was better but still shit compared to netflix, even though the shipping centers are the same distance away and netflix costs less. I would have canceled it earlier but I wasn't the one paying for it for a while.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Well it makes sense for Netflix to cost less since movies cost less, but if their turnaround times are considerably slower then that is its own price increase, in essence.

If it's roughly 23 dollars for a two month subscription, than I would need to play at least 4 a month to have a better deal than store rentals (since they are 7.99 per rental). Unless the turnaround is really shitty I would expect I could do that, but that other shit you mentioned also needs to be considered. They really charge you if something gets damaged in transit? What kind of fucked up shit is that?

 

[I.C. Wiener]

No, not if you report it lost/stolen, but it's just another obstacle to getting your damn game. They'll actually cancel your subscription if too many items start to go missing. I read at one point that they're legal fighting with the postal service because they give netflix 'specdial treatment', but I don't know if anything came of it.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Blockbuster

Wait, blockbuster hasn't gone under yet?

 

[Forest Dweller]

Update on the whole online rental thing:

Blockbuster.

Now I knew they were competing with Netflix on online movie rentals and it looks like Netflix has the upper hand there, but I recently found out that they've added game rentals into their catalogue, and what's more, there's no additional charge. Apparently you can mix and match games and movies in your queue however you want. So it's definitely cheaper than Gamefly, and since they have a lot of distribution centers (closer to Netflix numbers) the turnaround seems to be faster too.

Worth looking into imo.

http://www.blockbuster.com/games/help/faq/1616