GameStop customers in Philadelphia should be prepared to submit a fingerprint scan when looking to trade-in a game.
The requirement is being implemented in several of the city's stores as an anti-theft measure to help police track criminals who use GameStop stores as pawn shops, according to Kotaku.
One employee at a Philly GameStop said customers at these locations won't be able to trade-in a game unless they provide a fingerprint scan.
A GameStop representative said in an email that the scanning process is one "that we've recently implemented (starting in early July) in Philadelphia-area stores at the request of the Philadelphia police department," adding that the fingerprint scanning, "is a practice we've also put into place in other parts of the U.S., depending on local or statewide second-hand dealer or pawn broker laws."
Fingerprints collected at these GameStop stores are uploaded to LeadsOnline, an online database that processes millions of transactions made each month by over 10,000 different secondhand goods stores throughout the U.S., PC Magazine reported. Law enforcement will be able to access these fingerprints by typing in a case number of a certain crime they're investigating, giving them the ability to look through transactions from different locations.
Not every GameStop customer is thrilled with the new fingerprint requirement, with several unnamed individuals saying it is an overreach and unnecessary, CBS Philadelphia reported.
"That is a little absurd, it's just a video game," one unnamed critic said.
City Solicitor Shelley Smith said, however, that not all GameStop stores in the city have to abide by the new requirement.
"What GameStop does doesn't meet any of the elements of the definition of the code, so the pawnbreaker ordinance doesn't apply to GameStop," Smith said.
