A lawsuit filed against GameStop accuses the company of recording its customers' conversations via its support service without their consent.
According to reports by Bloomberg, Miguel A. Licea filed the proposed class-action lawsuit on Sept. 6 in federal court in California. The reports allege that GameStop "secretly wiretaps the chat feature on its website and then shares the transcripts with a third party that harvests the data for marketing purposes." The complaint alleges that the company violated California's Invasion of Privacy Act by collecting conversations of website visitors and creating transcripts from them without obtaining any prior consent.
The California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) states that "website operations cannot create transcripts of visitors' conversations without obtaining prior, express consent from all parties to the conversation." Lawyers working with Licea added in the filing that it is easy to comply with the CIPA, as most companies are "simply notifying website visitors if their conversations are being recorded."
GameStop is one of many companies to have a chat interface on its website, where users can ask customer service questions and get help with their problems directly through the company. However, Licea claims that GameStop shares the secret transcripts with Zendesk, a software company and customer support service provider, which uses highly personal information for sales and marketing.
This lawsuit also claims that GameStop allegedly "neither informs visitors nor obtains their prior express consent to these intrusions." It also said: "rather than merely providing a software service, Defendant allows Zendesk to intercept and use the secret transcripts."
"Given the nature of Defendant's business, website visitors typically share highly personal and sensitive data with Defendant when using the website chat feature," the suit continued. "Consumers would be shocked and appalled to know that Defendant secretly creates transcripts of those conversations and shares them with a third party."
While GameStop is the largest video game retailer worldwide, this lawsuit isn't the only recent controversy the company has seen in 2022. GameStop's earning report for the second quarter of 2022 (May-July) showed a loss of $108.7 million, compared to a $61.6 million loss in the same quarter last year. In August 2022, GameStop's NFT marketplace sold itch.io games as NFTs without the permission of the creators and developers. It also saw controversy in 2021 after GameStop's stocks soared after members of a "meme stock market" subreddit inflated the shares exponentially. A year later, GameStop split its stock market shares, making the price jump higher once more.
The company has faced many public difficulties and controversies since it was founded in 1984, and this lawsuit is no exception.
Source: Bloomberg via GamesIndustry.biz