Master Gamer News: Special Report

   Alleged piracy operations have been shut down in at least two stores 
owned by Babbage's Etc, the parent company of FuncoLand, Babbage's, Software
Etc, and GameStop.  Several FuncoLand customers, all of whom wish to remain 
anonymous, tell Master Gamer that the sale of pirated games was allegedly 
taking place at the FuncoLand store in Frederick, Maryland.  At least one of 
the customers who contacted Master Gamer also tipped off management, and 
within days of the customer notifying management, all of the accused 
employees were fired.  None of the fired employees could be reached for 
comment at press time.
   Master Gamer's sources claim that several FuncoLand employees were in the 
practice of casually bringing up the topic of piracy in conversations with 
customers.  If customers weren't opposed to the idea in general, they would 
purportedly be offered copies of full-priced games for approximately $20.  
None of the illegal transactions would be recorded as official FuncoLand 
sales; instead, the individual employees would allegedly pocket the money 
for themselves.
   Two of the FuncoLand customers who contacted Master Gamer also claim that 
some FuncoLand employees were in the practice of using pirated games as a 
way to placate disgruntled employees.  When customers angrily demanded to 
return a particular game or were otherwise being "problem customers," they 
would allegedly be offered pirated games for cheap prices in order to satisfy
them and ensure that they "left the store with smiles on their faces."
   The piracy operation in this particular store was purportedly going on 
for "several months" with new-release games for the Sony PlayStation 1 and 
Sega Dreamcast.  Sources report that the FuncoLand employees did not copy the
games themselves.  Instead, they allegedly received large shipments of 
pirated games from the Babbage's location in Hagerstown, Maryland.  Master 
Gamer's sources indicate that one employee has been fired at the Hagerstown 
Babbage's.
   When reached for comment, Babbages Etc's Director of Loss Prevention, 
Cheryl Blake, confirmed some of the allegations that Master Gamer's sources 
have made in this story.  The following is a transcript of a telephone 
interview that was conducted with Blake earlier this week.
     
Ivan Trembow: Is it an accurate statement that several employees at the 
Frederick FuncoLand were fired for pirating games?

Cheryl Blake: There were employees that were terminated for pirating games, 
yes.

Trembow: Is that also true at the Babbage's location in Hagerstown, Maryland?

Blake: There were employees that were terminated at several of our stores in 
the area.  It's really hard for me to say to you specifically which stores, 
but just so that you understand and your readers understand, we won't put up 
with it in our company.  It's very serious, we react to it extremely quickly,
and we have zero tolerance.

Trembow: Are charges normally pressed against alleged pirates in a situation 
such as this?

Blake: We take this out of the store people's hands and we put it in the 
Loss Prevention people's hands because they're the professionals in this... 
but as far as for me to tell you, "We prosecuted this person or this person,"
that's not public record yet until everything goes to court.

Trembow: What's the legal course of action for the video game companies whose
work was allegedly pirated?

Blake: In these situations, we let the video game companies know that we 
have certain situations and give them information so if they want to pursue 
with piracy charges, they can.  They're the ones that have been done wrong 
because it's their items that have been pirated.  When people are stealing 
from our company, then we go through and we prosecute them very, very 
strongly, and anyone who does any type of piracy or traffics in any fit of 
counterfeiting, they lose their job immediately.  There's zero tolerance for 
that type of behavior in our stores.

Trembow: At these particular stores and at 900+ other Babbage's Etc. stores 
across the country, what steps are being taken to make sure that this kind of
thing doesn't crop up again in the future?

Blake: You know, that's actually a very interesting question.  Believe it or
not, there's a lot of people that don't understand that copying items is 
illegal, and so we've always taken a very strong initiative to send out very 
strict policy statements letting people know that number one, that this is 
illegal and that you can't do it, and that number two, we will not tolerate 
this in our company, and they will proceed to lose their jobs and that we 
will proceed with the full power of the law, and that we will turn them over 
to the manufacturers that publish these games whose rights have been taken 
away with the copying of their games.
   We also have a lot of things set up so that associates who are 
uncomfortable with things going on at their store have outlets that they can 
call, and they can give their name or they can be anonymous so that they can 
always be able to report any type of business abuse, because they don't want 
to work with people who are doing things that are wrong.  All of our stores 
have an 800 number that's posted so that the employees can call and report 
any type of business abuse on this 800 number and they can do it anonymously. 
   One thing that we stand very strongly on is that we value the 
confidentiality of our employees above everything else.  So, if anybody 
reports any type of theft, it doesn't matter whether it's piracy or if it's 
any other type of theft, we're going to follow up on it.  People do not steal 
one time, they do not counterfeit one time, and if it means that I might 
blow my source, I'll let somebody do something a little bit longer just to 
protect the confidentiality of our people.

Trembow: Are you still investigating other stores in Maryland, or are you 
confident that all of the problems have been taken care of throughout the 
area?

Blake: I can't comment on any current investigations that are going on, but 
I can say that anytime something like this happens, we look at places even 
where we don't have information.

Trembow: How often does someone working for Babbage's Etc. go into a store 
and make sure that everything is running smoothly and that nothing shady is 
going on?

Blake: We not only encourage our district managers and our regional Loss 
Prevention managers to make unannounced visits to stores, we use integrity 
shoppers, we use customer service shoppers in the stores, and we employ a lot
of different techniques to find out when a store becomes... is not doing what
they should, and then we get on that.
   We have a team of Loss Prevention managers that have... each of them have 
a minimum of 10 years, but some of them have over 20 years of experience in 
the field, so they're all trained investigators, and so I think they do a 
phenomenal job in checking it out.  Obviously, I can't give out exactly how 
we do it because we don't people to, you know, say, "Okay, I'm going to hide 
from this part by doing something else."  So, we don't give up our 
techniques, but our people have a huge amount of experience and are very 
good at what they do.

Trembow: You said earlier that a lot of people don't know that pirating games 
is illegal in the first place and that the awareness level isn't very high.
In the cases of the individual customers who do know that they're buying 
pirated games, are there any measures in place to go after any of the 
customers who buy pirated games knowing that they're breaking the law?

Blake: We don't usually know who the customer transactions are with.  There 
isn't a way to do it, but if a manufacturer wants to check on something or 
work on it, we're going to cooperate with our vendor partners.  The fact is 
that we take this extremely seriously and we don't tolerate it, and our 
vendors are extremely important to us.  We have to be in a partnership with 
them, and we are going to continue to react and treat these things as Loss 
Prevention issues and criminal matters.  If we have to go into court, we go 
into court.  We have no problem with that.

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