At our game store, we used to have a policy that customers could try out any game in the store. It really helped cut down on returns. This meant, however, that we would get a few customers who would abuse this policy.

One man would come in almost daily and spend hours playing games, rarely purchasing anything.

When this happened, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion had come out. The man was coming in daily and spent literally hours standing in one spot and playing the game.

I would inform him every half hour or so that he needed to take a break and could not just play games all day. He would save, walk away for a minute, and jump right back to it when I started working on something else.

After a few days of this, I was tired of him.

The next time he came in, he played Oblivion for a solid five hours. I didn’t bother him once. When he finally took his leave of the game and I was sure he was gone, I loaded up his game and dumped almost a week’s worth of progress in one part of the map. Then, I sent his character across the map to the woods and left his character naked and alone. Finally, I deleted every save file except this one, and shut the game off.

The next time the man came in, he asked to play Oblivion. I gladly obliged, put the game in, and walked away. I can still remember him sputtering and frantically trying to search for a way to get his progress back.

When he demanded to know what had happened, I politely told him that this was a store game and everyone had access to the save files. If he wanted to be able to play without the risk of someone else having access to it, he would probably want to actually buy the game.

He was practically in tears when he left, but he did finally buy the game and take it home.