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Better late than ever, it's The 7th Annual Cheapy Awards, the only awards that recognize the best (and worst) in video game retail, nominate and voted on by the Cheap Ass Gamers, the most knowledgeable video game shoppers in the world! The CAGs nominated and voted over 50,000 times in 13 different retail related categories and 5 CAG community categories.

Congratulations to BannedEpisode and MajorGamerGeek both of whom have won a $500 Amazon Gift Certificate for participating in the Cheapy Awards voting.

Read on for the results!


Best Online Game Retailer: Amazon.com


Best Online Customer Service: Amazon.com


Best Online Deal: Amazon.com: Black Friday Sales


Best Game Trade-In Program: Amazon.com


Amazon takes home four awards this year, winning Best Online Retailer and Best Online Customer Service awards four years in a row while making it three in a row for Best Online Deal. They've also won Best Game Trade-in Program which is a new award for this year. Amazons victories include whopping 80% landslides in the Best Online Retailer and Best Online Customer Service categories.

In response to their impressive victories, the Amazon Video Game Team has provided the following statement:

"The Amazon.com Video Games team is excited and grateful to win the Cheapy Awards for Best Online Game Retailer, Best Online Customer Service, Best Online Deal, and Best Game Trade-in Program. We will continue to focus on creating a high-quality customer experience on Amazon.com, whether you are trading, selling or buying games, and the recognition of the CAG community helps us know we’re on the right path. In the last year we shipped hundreds of titles with Release Date Delivery, launched the (now, award-winning) Amazon.com Video Games Trade-In program, and embraced digital with our launches of PC download, Xbox Live, PSN and Wii Ware titles. We’ve got more exciting initiatives planned for 2010, but above all we will remain focused on delivering great deals for all gamers!"



Best Brick & Mortar Game Retailer: Best Buy

It's the fourth straight victory for Best Buy in the Best Brick & Mortar Game Retailer category. With Circuit City completely out of the picture, things are looking good for them to repeat again next year. Congratulations to Best Buy!



Best Independent Online Game Retailer: Play-Asia.com

This is the fourth year that Play-Asia has taken home a Cheapy award. Consistent weekly deals, seasonal sales/contests, great service, and coupons with every order helped seal the deal for the Hong Kong based specialty retailer.

A Play-Asia.com spokesperson responded to news of their Cheapy Award with this statement:

"Thanks to all of you for your support during the past year! We believe it was a challenging year for everyone in the industry on both sides of the equation. For gamers it meant that a lot of releases were canceled; for shop owners we had to cope with decreased demand caused by release after release being cut. Winning the Cheapy Award makes us very happy, but we still have areas in which we can and will improve upon. In fact, we might even have a surprise announcement later this year. Enough rambling! Thank you again and our gratitude extends to CheapyD & the never tired community of CheapAssGamer.com, including the CAGCast crew of Wombat & Boatcrash. Happy gaming everyone!


Best Used Game Retailer: GameFly

A new category for this year, GameFly wins the first ever Best Used Game Retailer award. Frequent and excellent sales which include free shipping and a guarantee of a box and manual helped contribute to GameFly's win.

A representative from GameFly addressed their win with this statement:

“GameFly wants to thank the Cheap Ass Gamer community for voting GameFly.com as the best place to buy used games. We will always strive to get Cheap Ass Gamer visitors the games they want at the lowest prices. Thank you for your support.”



Brick & Mortar Deal/Sale of the Year: Best Buy's Buy 2, Get 1 Free Sale

Last year, Toys R Us took home the Cheapy with their Buy 2, Get 1 Free Sale. Although it was an extremely close vote, a better selection and lower prices enabled Best Buy's version of the sale to beat out the competition.



Best Game Trading Website: Goozex.com


Gooxez has won the Game Trading Website award for the third year which is also how long we've had this category. Goozex's landslide victory was the biggest of this year's Cheapy Awards.

Instead of swapping directly with other users, Goozex traders mail out their games for Goozex Points, and then use those points to get other games from other Goozex users. The CAG community really enjoys this interesting take on game trading as a way to derive great value from their used games.

The Goozex team responded to their win with this statement:

"Wow, voted best in class three years in a row by one of the best and most savvy video game communities out there! We’re thankful and humbled by winning the CAG Awards. Goozex has been in business since the summer of 2006. It’s about the same amount of time we’ve been here on CAG too. Over the last few years we’ve upgraded, tweaked and added new things like movie trading to improve the overall site for members, but our original message has stayed the same: to deliver the best online trading experience with fair values in a hassle free system. If you’ve traded games on Goozex then you’re part of the $6 million saved by our members to date.

It’s our pleasure to accept this award. We’ll continue to work hard to make the site better and meet your demands! Thanks to CheapyD for being…well…CheapyD (aka awesome). If you want direct access to the GTeam, tweet us, we’ll respond."



Biggest CAG Shopping News: ECA Amazon Codes & Cancellation Controversy


Most Memorable CAG Villain: HalHalpin


Best CAG Forum Thread (non-deal): The ECA Cancellation Thread

This is an extremely hard one to summarize in a few paragraphs, but I'll give it a shot. The ECA provided it's members with 10% off Amazon gaming discount codes which proved to be very popular with game shoppers, especially CAGs. This discount enticed many gamers to sign up for a paying membership with the ECA, although, a code for free ECA memberships was published in an issue of Game Informer magazine as part of an article written by ECA President, Hal Halpin. As you would imagine, this free membership code was soon posted on a bunch of gaming and shopping websites, including CAG.

It was soon discovered that certain versions of the Amazon/ECA discount codes could be combined, providing a significantly higher discount than the intended 10%. Because of this abuse and the trouble it caused, Amazon decided to discontinue their discount codes with the ECA. As a result, some users wanted to cancel their ECA memberships. Wikipedia sums up what happened next:

"In December of 2009 the ECA was the target of widespread complaints over membership cancellations and procedures. Members discovered that the online option to cancel their memberships was a non-working button. The ECA apologized claiming the option to cancel membership on their website had been an oversight and was mistakenly placed there. As a result, members attempting to use this feature had not had their memberships canceled. In addition, some members trying to cancel were displeased to find that the ECA required a mailed letter to cancel their memberships and demanded a feature to do so on the website while questioning the ethics of the organization."

This whole mess won the Biggest CAG Shopping News award while ECA President, Hal Halpin (who has an account here, making him eligible) wins Most Memorable CAG Villain. CAGs simmias & Reira organized a campaign (via CAG forum thread) that would send hundreds of letters on CAGs behalf to cancel their ECA Membership. This effort helped "The ECA Cancellation Thread" win the award for Best CAG Forum Thread (non-deal).



Best Game Value: Fallout 3 Game Of the Year

Fallout 3, who finished a very close second in last year's competition, makes excellent use of it's second chance in "Game of the Year Edition" form, taking home this year's award for Best Game Value. This award goes to the game that was most worthy of its full retail price.

A representitive for Bethesda responded the award by saying:

"We like to think me make games that give you a lot of bang for your buck, and are proud to be awarded Best Game Value for Fallout 3 GotY edition. We’re glad to hear so many people have played it and enjoyed it and found it worthy of their hard-earned money."



Worst Online Game Retailer: EB Games.com / GameStop.com


Worst B&M Game Retailer: EB Games / GameStop

Unfortunately for GameStop, this is the forth year in a row that they've won the Worst Online Game Retailer and Worst B&M Game Retailer "awards". However, It's not all doom and gloom for the major retailer, as they did manage two second place finishes in the newly created Best Game Trade-In Program and Best Used Game Retailer categories.



CAG Community Award: jp0213

With Speedy1961's "retirement", the Community and Deal Buster awards were fair game once again. In an amazingly close contest separated by only 4 votes, jp0213 wins this year's CAG Community Award.

jp20213 responds to his victory with this statement:

"I feel honored just to have been nominated for the award but to win is truly crazy in my eyes. I actually danced a little jig once I got the news.

I do feel that I really don't deserve the reward as most of my work in the GameStop TIV thread and in the CAG database could easily be done by anyone. I couldn't even do what I do without the contributions of values from people who do trades at GameStop. To that end, I thank everyone who has and continues to contribute to the lists be it by prices or deals. Thanks also go to CheapyD and all the mods on the site that have helped me out and gave me suggestions to keep things organized. I also want to thank everyone who voted for me as this is a great honor in my eyes. I hope to continue to do right by all of you throughout this year."



Speedy1961 Deal Buster Award: Scorch

Scorch is the first winner of the newly named Speedy1961 Deal Buster Award, which goes to to the CAG who shared the most/best deals.

Upon learning the goodnews, Scorch responded with this statement:

"Wow! What an honor to win this award, especially since I'm the first person to win it aside from the guy it was created and named after (or so Cheapy tells me). His deal postings ruffled enough feathers to get not only himself but CAG subpoenaed by Circuit City's lawyers! I'm glad that I got a lot of you to shop at Game Crazy this past year. It was definitely fun to post the deals and see your guys excitement when you got in on the deal, especially when you thought the deal was too crazy to be true, such as the older system $9.99 clearance (featuring GBA SP's and GB Micro's for $9.99!)

To all of you guys that voted for me - thanks. The company will be shutting more stores down this year, and while the situation continues to look more bleak as the days go on, so long as I am able to, I will continue to provide you with deals!"



Best CAG Blog: Shimrra

Shimrra wins the first ever Best CAG Blog award. His "Daily HaHa" is among the most popular blogs on CAG as evidenced by this award.

Shimrra responds to his victory with the following:

"I would like to thank everyone on CAG who voted for me it means a lot coming from you guys/gals. Also a special thank you to everyone for their expression of condolences for my family.

All I wanted to do with my blog is to contribute something different other than gaming. I will leave the game reviews or bragging blogs to the experts all I want is to sit back and laugh. What I also love the most is reading your comments, damn it you people are ing funny.

I also want to thank CheapyD, Wombat, Shipwreck and to all the moderators out there who keep this great site running. Keep up the great work guys. Love the site and love the podcast.

P.S.
Johnnyrocker360 why are you so afraid of playing against me, and Nebenator I got your 6 dawg HALO REACH. FRRRRRUNKIS"




Thanks to all the CAGs who participated in this years voting and nominations for The 7th Annual Cheapy Awards. A special thumbs-up to the award winning retailers who provided us with great deals and service in 2009. See you next year!

Quick rundown of winners:

Best Online Game Retailer: Amazon.com
Best Online Customer Service: Amazon.com
Best Online Deal: Amazon.com: Black Friday Sales
Best Game Trade-in Program: Amazon.com
Best Brick & Mortar Game Retailer: Best Buy
Best Independent/Specialty Online Game Retailer: Play-Asia.com
Brick & Mortar Deal/Sale of the Year: Best Buy: Buy 2, Get 1 Free Games
Best Game Trading Website: Goozex.com
Biggest CAG Shopping News: ECA Amazon Codes & Cancellation Controversy
Best Game Value: Fallout 3 Game Of the Year
Worst Online Game Retailer: EB Games.com / GameStop.com
Worst B&M Game Retailer: EB Games / GameStop

CAG Community Award: jp0213
CAG Deal Buster: Scorch
Most Memorable CAG Villain: HalHalpin
Best CAG Forum Thread (non-deal): The ECA Cancellation Thread
Best CAG Blog: Shimrra



Previous winners:
6th Annual Cheapy Awards
5th Annual Cheapy Awards
4th Annual Cheapy Awards
3rd Annual Cheapy Awards
2nd Annual Cheapy Awards
1st Annual Cheapy Awards

Not surprised that ECA/Hal Halpin got those three items. I think that mess will be remembered for a long time. The Steam sale got more votes than I expected as well. I personally spent too much money on that one.

God, I could really go for a Buy 2, Get 1 Free sale right now.

Congrats to all.

CAG community award was amazing close! Congrats to all winners, especially the $500 GC winners!


P.S. sonic's ultimate genesis collection = real best value!!

Yay for the awards finally going up! Glad to see Amazon walk away with so many bald-headed trophies. Wait....that sounds wrong.

I'm keeping my tux on a little longer. Next year, I want to see a lot more avatar's dressed up for the awards.

Unfortunately for GameStop, this is the forth year in a row that they've won the Worst Online Game Retailer and Worst B&M Game Retailer "awards". However, It's not all doom and gloom for the major retailer, as they did manage two second place finishes in the newly created Best Game Trade-In Program and Best Used Game Retailer categories.

I'm sure they're crying their eyes out and wiping them with their billions and billions of your dollars.

Congrats to all of the winners, especially Shimrra!

I'm glad to see my thread did so well, and I've adjusted my user title and signature accordingly.

P.S. Thanks for the shout-out, Shimmra!

Nice stuff. Cheapy, how about for next year you make a CAG Community GOTY Award? I think some of the games under Best Game Value aren't really a value and because there is no CAG GOTY Award, a lot of people consider Best Game Value to be CAG's GOTY Award.

I love Shimrras haha blogs but I did actually vote for Mana Knight. Congrats to all, and lets hope we don't wait till March next time for the results.

Poor Gamestop. They get bombed but the top thread is dedicated to them.

Damnit GoG.com didn't make it. But jp0213 won the community award! Nice win jp, you deserved it.

I'm actually very shocked that I at least got 2nd place for blogs.

I don't think Cheapy deserved 2nd place in the CAG Villain Category -- he has been very involved in donations to Child's Play and to Haiti, not to mention the fun CAGcast and that this is a terrific site with a ton of upgrades over the past year.

Snice !

Thank You CAG for all the great deals I have been able to take advantage of in the years that I have been a member. The added bonus of getting a fantastic prize is just icing on the cake. I may not post much but I am always here and after today I will be here even more often.

I can hardly believe it, this means a lot to me being a Cheap Ass (And broke ass) Gamer and College Student.

Thanks again!

Thank you for not banning me

Congratulations to all the winners!

^ and losers!

Originally Posted by MIGGO God, I could really go for a Buy 2, Get 1 Free sale right now. Congrats to all.

There's one at Game Crazy stores until March 17th.. and then there's another one at Game Crazy the first week of April, I think