Two years ago, GameFly filed a dispute with the US Postal Service, saying that the mail carrier was providing preferential treatment to big companies Netflix and Blockbuster. The central issue is the sorting of mail from the services which was being hand-sorted at no charge for the big boys while GameFly was left to either pay a surcharge or see more of their discs destroyed by the machinery.
This week, the Postal Regulatory Commission handed down a ruling which concurs with Gamefly's claim and orders the establishment of new mail categories for first-class DVD mailers. The new categories, designed specifically for services of this sort, will prevent GameFly from incurring the hand-sorting fees or any fees for envelopes being slightly too thick or heavy.
Good for them. I like GameFly and used the service for a few years quite happily, so it's nice to hear them get a win in this. I'm honestly a little surprised that the movie services haven't seriously tried to rent games out because I would think the market sound and the field pretty wide open. Moves like this will at least give GameFly a fighting chance if that should ever come to pass.
GameFly wins in USPS dispute [Gamespot] [Image]
Conrad Zimmerman is Destructoid's News Editor and home to the busiest mustache in the gaming press. An amateur historian and pop culture fanatic, Conrad possesses a nearly limitless wealth of videogame factoids and a passion for the power of games to teach, inspire and entertain. He enjoys reading, writing and turning things which should be fun into work.
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Contest:
7:00 AM on 04.22.2011 | 
So far, I've been averaging about 5-6 days after I place it in my Q.
Gamefly is a great service, I hope they flourish. I've also bought alot of games from them and it's kept me from buying some real stinkers too.
I keep a two-at-a-time plan to rent the occasional game like Enslaved that I'd like to play, but don't really care to own. Plus Netflix is getting really shitty about updating their back catalog with blu-rays, so Blockbuster is actually a pretty good and decently cheap supplement, all-around.
tl;dr - you can already rent games from blockbuster online