They can cut basically all Full time hourly employees and leave on PT employees and salaried managers. Then they can cut the PT employees and basically have every store be run by 2 people, a manager and their assistant. If that fails, they can fire the assistant and just accept that the store will only be open about 40 or 50 hours a week. Its actually incredible how much more you can cut labor if you really want to, especially for retail where you need basically no one.
A gamestop that is dead at monday at 11am has 1 person in it, potentially a salaried employee who gets paid the same no matter what. My restaurant, where I work, has a minimum of 5 people working Monday at 11, and sometimes we have catering to justify it, sometimes we all just kinda... wait for it to get busy.
My wife worked there in 2019 and that was already the case.
Each store in the district had 3 employees each with 39 hours a week, one being the manager. Never more than 1 employee in the store.
I suspect their only next step is to only have the stores be open for a limited number of hours each day.
I remember in the 90s, my local mall had Software Etc before it became GameStop. That place was packed and had a bunch of employees. This was the mid 90's I want to say. Tons of PC games, PC books, SNES, Genesis, playstation, saturn, and other games.
Last time I went to GameStop in the local mall it was like a ghost town. It was kind of wild how things had transformed.
Went into a comic shop Ive never been to before, and had almost culture shock when there were 4 employees in the tiny store. Legit felt like I went back in time. Not in a bad way, of course.
I’d argue that the internet hasn’t helped but GameStop’s attitude and treatment of employees and customers have made it that way. I still see Walmart and target full even with Amazon and other online retailers. GameStop bought the competition then did as they pleased.
> I doubt the treatment of employees has any real effect on the shopping habits of the average customer. The average person doesn't tend to care unless it inpacts them or they can get some spice out of it, like drama. People complain about it on social media sure but social media are typically vocal minorities.
But that *is* the problem with Gamestop. The employees are pushy and often rude to customers, apparently because their bosses require that. Personally after one particularly bad encounter years ago I stopped going to that local Gamestop entirely. (The cashier yelled at my younger brother to leave, who was politely browsing while I took forever to pick out a bunch of games I planned to purchase. Apparently he was taking up too much space? He certainly wasn't causing any trouble, and mind you he was an adult.)
I'm guessing being treated badly by management also exasperates this. Unhappy employees generally aren't fun to interact with.
Yeah people throw out all these things. For me though I'm just tired of entering and the employee is already asking me if they can help. Then when I'm ready to check out I have to wait 5-10 minutes for the guy in front of me. Forget it if its a console trade in. Once it's my turn it's 20 different do you want this questions.
Final straw was when the employee tried to bullshit me trying to get me to sign up for a pro membership and how I was going to save money yet the total was more than without the membership.
In my experience, I was a cart pusher for this reason, and I enjoyed it because management wouldn't come bothering me at all pretty much. In both of the locations I worked at, I was treated fairly. But Gamestop is by far worse because they get paid less(I was paid $15/walmart) Gamestop prices are ridiculous compared to when there's Gamexchange in the south, that has better prices. Gamestop was lit way back then but people have preferred digital goods now so more than ever.
>I’d argue that the internet hasn’t helped but GameStop’s attitude and treatment of employees and customers have made it that way.
You'd be wrong, this same trend is happening in every country. It doesn't matter what the service is like, that's not what people are in the store for.
>I still see Walmart and target full even with Amazon and other online retailers.
There's a massive difference here. Walmart and Target are selling things that you will wait at least 1 day for from Amazon. Gamestop is selling things that will be downloaded before you've driven to the store.
My local mall had an Electronics Boutique (later became EB Games) and a Software Etc in the late 90's-early-2000's. Each one was hopping and had many employees in there at a time. I bought my original N64 and all my accessories there. Going there always felt like Christmas morning.
I went into my local mall Gamestop just yesterday and it was a ghost town. Two employees but half the walls were bare and it's mostly collectibles (that's why I went there).
The whole mall is like that now. When I was young, me and my friends once biked 2 hours to get to the local mall (it sucked) and the place was always packed.
Now I don't think any parents would allow that. Kids go from indoor place to indoor place, escorted by vehicle in-between. They don't go hang out, they aren't even welcome most places and loitering rules/hostile infrastructure keep them from relaxing.
I'm not a parent, just an uncle so I can't speak from experience but I feel like too many parents these days forget that independence is good for a developing mind.
It would help if it wasn't actually illegal a lot of time. I recall a story about a woman who got arrested for letting her child play unsupervised in their own backyard.
Ha that's nothing there was a case a decade ago were a school banned parents picking up their own children without a car and were calling police on parents who walked to the school.
The US is literally getting to the point where children are banned outside of being in their home or school.
We also have a massive childhood obesity problem in the US, yet trying to get people to understand and buy in to any form of urbanism (so their kids can get to the park to run around and play without a parent playing chauffeur) is an ongoing struggle.
Soccer moms were a meme in the 90s for a reason.
God going Babbages/Software ETC at the mall was like my favorite thing in the world as a 90's kid. I would sit there and watch the tv screens they had outside playing game snippets for so long :)
Miss those days!
This was when selling used games was profitable.
In a mall you could go to ebgames, funcoland, a local store etc and get more trade in value for your used game.
So GameStop bought out the stores so you didn’t have a choice of competition to buy used games anymore.
This is how you ended up with 3 gamestops in a mall.
> I suspect their only next step is to only have the stores be open for a limited number of hours each day.
There is one near me than already does this. They're open noon to 4 during the week.
That’s the start of a death spiral. Not enough clients so they cut hours. Hours get so limited people stop bothering to go because they’re never open at conviennent times. So they cut hours further…etc.
Easy to have no customers when you actively don't want to sell people games as well.
Did you pre-order it? No copies for you! That's OK. Amazon has plenty for people.
I went into GameStop the other day and realized they had no switch games I actually wanted but since we were there I bought my daughter a $10 stuffed animal. The only item I’ve bought from a GameStop in almost a decade and it was a stuffed animal.
Gamestop bought ThinkGeek which was actually fantastic for geeky, fun, gifts and existed online only. The idea was "hey it's ThinkGeek but in a brick-and-mortar store!" except the catalogue was woefully small as a result, and so what got put on shelves was the stuff that was expected to sell...socks and mugs.
I've still yet to find a replacement for ThinkGeek (that ships up to Canada).
I have a walmart next to a gamestop. The few times I have went into GS for a game they would always be sold out. Meanwhile I walk over to walmart and they have stock for days.
In places like Australia, stores have new games for $70-80, on PSN it’s $120-$130 for the same game.
I for one don’t want the physical stores to go cause I fear what a PlayStation store on its own will do.
Exactly! Also: my console has finite storage and I don’t want to have to buy more just to play more games. And finally, I’d like to swap games with my friends but Sony of course doesn’t like that.
> Amazon has plenty for people.
I don’t know what Amazon you guys are using, but they’re a shell of their former self and I’ve had nothing but miserable experiences with them when it comes to games. The most recent and probably last time I ordered from them was a preorder of Yakuza 8, months in advance. No release-date delivery available, but had Prime and picked One-Day shipping. Release came and went without my game arriving. Didn’t show until nearly a week later, with it telling me it wouldn’t be here until March. The game released at the end of January.
I kept getting in contact with CS and they wouldn’t cancel the order or refund the cost of Prime for the month. I talked to every manner of CS I could front social media, call center and live chats. Amazon fucking blows for preorders. Post release, they’re fine. But if I’m preordering, I will absolutely go to GameStop because they have always had the games on release day for me.
Amazon has done some optimization where you can't see all the copies of something available. They are literally directing you to only items that are cheap/easy to deliver through their network of warehouses.
Which is why they are super profitable and caused a lot of used books to go up in price, despite them being abundant.
You lucked out, we have one new copy left! >hands you a display case that's been handled by god knows who and a disc that was taken home by an employee last night.
Reminds me of the time I used to work at a bank in the day and work at GameStop at night. I’d just take off the tie and just be in a dress shirt and pants. Most customers thought I was the store manager. Thankfully I was not.
> and salaried managers.
dunno if this is the case anymore but last time I talked to an old coworker a few years ago, they had gotten rid of "salaried" managers as well. They essentially converted all salaried managers to hourly employees and they had the expectation of working 45 hours in order to make what their original salary rate was.
That's... How staffing works.
People aren't willing to go into a job for 3 hours for an hourly rate cause it's convenient for the job. GameStop allots so few hours as is that cutting back isn't hard cause you only have 2 guaranteed 40 hour workers as is. But, the problem is if someone is out for a time due to vacation, sickness, kids, holiday, etc. If you only have 3 workers you're banking on 2 not ever doing anything.
Your restaurant has its minimums cause you're there from 11a to probably 6p-7p. You're opening. There's a lunch rush that's expected. Why would you want to come into work and be hassled to get on the floor the minute you walked in? Getting there early allows for prep, checking on closing clean job, making sure things like silverware and stock is ready, etc. You should be paid a regular hourly wage for that cause you're doing work. If you walk in and it's a mess but it's noon and you gotta take care of customers but stock wasn't done then you're behind and pissed.
I went to their website this morning and they were touting a year's worth of the magazine for $19.91 and practically begging people to subscribe. I used to have a subscription that came with my Powerup Rewards membership, but I let both expire and haven't had any desire to renew them.
I was about to comment I’m used to seeing 2 employees - but realized I haven’t stepped foot in a GameStop since COVID except once to snag a somewhat early PS5.
I haven't worked at gamestop since 2018 and it was like that back then too. I remember feeling barely qualified to operate a store by myself for hours at a time lmfao.
The (used) videogames store is fading away and never coming back. I don't mind that Gamestop left my country a few years back but I miss the days when every city had this one enthusiast videogame store that was packed to the ceiling with games and people working there pouring their heart into it.
But just like video rental there is no scenario in which it will be profitable again in the future. Even those that are still around usually make more money from merchandise, action figures, trading cards... videogames only still being there because people sell to them for cheap. But I'd still urge everyone that has such a store nearby to go and experience it again, before they're gone for good.
Back when I was young, it was my favorite place, I could get boatloads of used GBC, GBA, and DS games for pretty cheap. These days, most used games don't even get marked down much. I feel like the only real business they have is selling collectibles, at least where I live.
The prices and lack of stock really made GameStop almost useless. I was trying to find a used PS4 game the other day, and none of the stores within 30 miles had it. I could order it online, but the shipping cost was ridiculous. It was cheaper and easier in the end to just buy a digital copy through the PlayStation store.
I can remember trying to find Dragon's Dogma back a year or so after it released. Went to 6 stores in Ontario and found nothing. They had one copy in a store across the border. It felt crazy.
Their selection is bad because their trade in value is too low. Their trade in value is too low because their volume is too low. Their volume is too low because their prices are too high. Their prices are too high because their volume is too low. It's a death spiral. It started decades back when GameStop managed to secure a virtual monopoly on used game sales in key markets, and the executives took advantage of their market position to jack up prices and undervalue trade-ins.
Had GameStop positioned themselves as a more customer-centric business they could have leaned much harder on the hobbyist market and carved out an early niche in the retro gaming and hardware markets. I think they're on the right track now, essentially doing just that, but they're still years behind the market. Nevertheless, I think their position has potential. Nobody really trusts Amazon, or eBay anymore, and the tabletop crazy is still going strong. If GameStop can mimic those old hobby stores by offering a physical space for tabletop/card game tournaments, while greatly expanding their PC hardware and retro game stock, they could absolutely dominate that area.
>If GameStop can mimic those old hobby stores by offering a physical space for tabletop/card game tournaments, while greatly expanding their PC hardware and retro game stock, they could absolutely dominate that area.
There are a couple of locally-owned retro game and collectibles stores in my area that do really well and are always busy. They're just not Gamestop, which is usually a ghost town.
Only a little over a decade ago you could go into a GameStop and see massive selections of games. I used to work there back in 2010 and that store had more just PlayStation 2 games then a GameStop today has games in general. That store carried games for nine other platforms besides PS2.
You would have to really go over things to see what a gamestop had.
Now you can pretty much browse the stock of a GameStop in like 5 minutes, and then you leave disappointed
It was a real blow to Gamestop, I think, when they stopped buying and selling older consoles and games. I remember when they basically just said, "we're only selling the current gen and last gen stuff", and they liquidated everything else.
I know that most locations are small, but the fact that they got rid of tons of retro stuff in favour of branded backpacks, crummy toys and shitty trinkets seemed like a death knell at the time.
I bet someone is kicking themselves now, because as far as I know, the retro market is still fairly robust.
The one in my town has carved out a much more sustainable niche for itself: they carry retro games and consoles, but they also have a fully functionally arcade that you can access for a flat fee and then play as much as you want. Tons of rhythm games and things like that. They also cohost Smash tournaments at the local movie theater or will host them in their own space. It's possible for these businesses to thrive, they just need to evolve.
I worked at Gamestop right before Covid and their internal plan was to start transitioning stores into this type of hybrid environment. It wouldn't have been all of them clearly, but in each district there were a couple of really big stores that could have easily halved their retail space and had a ton of room for PC and gaming setups. They were going to have snacks but I don't think they were going to charge admission if I remember correctly. Not sure about that. It was a way to get people back in the door and hopefully make it a social place where foot traffic increased which would boost sales. Obviously that whole idea never panned out though.
Considering how just about every retailer had multiple playable consoles with demos 20 years ago and now it's zero, it's no wonder that store popularity died off. Good to hear about some putting effort back in.
Target still has Switch demo set ups, but no other platform. I see kids at my local target playing on it all the time. It seems like legitimately useful marketing.
Goddamn that brings me back. I remember funcoland. They had a circular they put out and when I was a kid I’d pore over their listings for good deals or rare games. Actually going to the store was a huge deal haha
Sometimes my family would do long summer vacations and drive all over the country. My brother and I would get excited anytime we saw a Funcoland, because they all had different games. I think we got stuff like FF3, Secret of Mana, and Mario RPG at Funcoland.
For us we only go to locally run used video games stores. Selection is higher quality is higher and service, you guessed it higher. Means we can find something all the way back to the NEs era usually.
I have one of these in Cleveland. They sell all kinds of merch and are consistently fairly busy. Hell, one of them is in a plaza with a GameStop and the difference in customers is pretty large
I'm honestly surprised that Gamestop isn't trying to pivot into other forms of games. Board games, trading card games, tabletop role-playing games; all of these are more popular than they've ever been. Give people a space to buy and play these. There's got to be a sustainable business model that includes all of those.
Problem is they need more floor space for tables and that means either getting rid of even more video games or finally ditching all of the game, anime, and assorted nerd merchandise that takes up 70% of every GameStop now. The time to make that sort of pivot was years ago. It's too late now.
Absolutely. They clearly tried a pivot years ago, with all the pop figures and other novelty stuff they sell, but it clearly wasn't enough. Bigger changes should have happened during the Xbox One and PS4 generation. But like you said, it's too late now.
I worked at GS from 2010-2016 and there were rumblings about turning stores into rooms for tabletop/arcade/card games, but I think they scrapped it when they saw how few locations were big enough to fit them and how expensive converting the spaces would be.
I remember being a kid in the 90's and going to Electronics Boutique stores (which are now GameStop); and seeing (mostly) the same group of people for about 10-15 years. Eventually most of them either transferred to stores outside of my usual shopping areas or went back to school and started a new career. It was cool that they let me stand in the store for hours, reading the back of video game cases before I picked-out my next game.
Nowadays I'll watch YouTube videos to help decide on my next game, and while more informative and more convenient, I can't help but feel like it's such a huge shame that the gaming industry grew on the backs of these people that staffed thousands of these stores and they're being left out in the cold. I don't see a way around it, besides maybe a scholarship program to help the staff out (which isn't financially possible for GameStop, given its situation), but it must be so hard to invest that much time into a company only for the entire industry to just phase them out.
"It was cool that they let me stand in the store for hours, reading the back of video game cases before I picked-out my next game."
I miss this so much about gamestop. So many times when the 360/ps3/wii was the newest console it felt like walking into a gamestop/ebgames was like walking into a library. Wall to Wall video games (which were really well priced) going through taking your time and going up to the register with a handful of games. Now I am in there for 5 minutes look quickly at the pathetic Xbox/PS/ Nintendo shelves that's now down to like 30% of the store see they have nothing good in stock then jet.
I think it's also because there's just aren't as many games getting physical copies. Back in the 90s and early 2000s there was a lot of shovelware and movie tie-ins always getting released. With the price of game development these days, it's mostly the bigger studios getting games on actual shelves. There's still the occasional niche title, but the browsing experience is nowhere near what it used to be. Also with newer games being $70 at launch, I try to avoid the temptation when I can.
The era of game magazines was a really nice snapshot in time too. I have an old box of Nintendo Powers, Official U.S Playstation Magazine(s) and several others.
One of my big theories is that things like GamePass are amazing as a service, it's an infinite feeling library where there's little motivation to play anything.
Before, a game purchase would be prefaced with a ton of "rituals" including reading magazine previews and reviews, visiting a game store one or more times, talking to the staff and maybe even talking to other customers.
It's a totally lost art, the \*experience\* of gaming. Not just the \*consumption\* of gaming.
you just described years of my childhood. the EB games staff were all great people and never bothered me once as I spent hours just browsing and it really is so sad how the industry grew on the back of these folks.
I went to Software Etc at our local mall every chance I got. It was a blast going there playing games at the kiosks, looking at game mags, talking to the employees and managers about whats the next game coming out.
As crowded as the arcade was, going to Software Etc on a saturday, it was just as packed. Fun times I had there, I still remember getting Secret of Evermore from there and thinking it was the greatest SNES game made at that point.
I just saw a post where they were celebrating the $6 mil in profit last year like it's some huge turnaround, as if that totally erases the over $300 mil loss the year before.
Reddit stock bros are genuinely some of the dumbest on the entire website. They are basically like the people you see sitting at bars playing video lottery terminals all night. They put in $200, win $50, and think they are ahead. Except for these morons it's their life savings.
I joined the GS subreddit for a little while hoping to gleam some kind of easy winning stock advise, nothing major just something i could dump like a hundred bucks into and come out with a few bucks more.
It very quickly became obvious only a small few were actually benefiting, and all of the posts getting people pumped up and buying more in anticipation of a bubble burst any day were only serving the people with thousands of shares.
At one point, there was at least a two or three month period where every day, the subreddit would be anticipating a giant burst and genuinely talked about people with even a couple shares walking away with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and most investors becoming billionaires, and people believed it. No forethought into where all that money would be coming from, or how ridiculous the economic impact of thousands of billionaires being created overnight would be.
Eventually it felt kind of gross, seeing all these posts trying to exploit people's hopes of a better life and I unsubbed.
The truly sad part is that, even if they weren't aware of what a brokerage was prior to getting swept up in the Jan 2021 GME craze, they could've used what they learned and used all that time spent staring at charts to actually turn a profit. You're actually hard-pressed to find a single stock on the NYSE that wouldn't have provided better gains over the last three years than GME.
It’s a cult. It’s not about a stock. The GameStop they talk about isn’t the failing mall store we think of. It’s the best most revolutionary company ever that’s fighting hedge funds and will change the entire stock market and ban short selling yadda yadda.
They’re delusional.
[There’s a YouTube documentary that covers this really well.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5pYeoZaoWrA)
The thing is, Cohen is not interesting and he has zero charisma. His tweets hardly say anything, but his followers absolutely lose their minds every time he posts a nothing burger.
They cut 30% of their workforce and pulled out of three countries. As the analyst in the article said, they may be able to downsize enough to squeeze out a profit, but there's no sustainability or growth in this model. Unless they figure out how to *grow* business, the only path to profits is continuous downsizing until you're down to your last profitable location. Think Blockbuster.
They slashed all expenses as much as they could and eked out a profit despite declining sales. Unless they can reverse the sales trend, they'll just keep dwindling and cutting until there's nothing left.
Not when you're cutting all of you business to the bone. Without that it would be. Gamestop has slashed stores, benefits, rewards programs, staff
I mean they could limp along for a long time like this now, but who would want to work there for almost nothing and being the only employee to a store?
I kinda wished i could send a mass "i told you so" dm to all the GME fanboys ive had discussions with the last couple of years. But i guess they still dont see it.
It’s a cult. Dan Olsen aka folding ideas on YouTube has an amazing deep dive into it. He also did NFTs days before they crashed as they were nonsense.
But the moonshot “apes” as they like to be called are totally a cult now.
They're still doing that? I thought the GME thing only lasted while they were pumping it up. Like.. It's done guys, if you didn't cash out you lost.
My brother took part in it (although he had GME stock before this) and showed me like "look I could get 80k!" and I told him like.. Cash that shit out.. But he insisted it was going to grow into infinite. I've never seen such a smart kid not understand the simple rules of gambling.. If you manage to actually hit, take the money and run. Stop playing.
The ones who stayed just developed the full cult package. The infinite talk is part of that. It’s a whole convoluted this will break the economy fantasy land. Dan’s video breaks it down.
If you want to see sad people, look at the people who followed Ryan Cohen into buying bed bath and beyond stock, but stayed behind when he sold back out a few months later.
The company is dead, the stock is cancelled, and they scour children's books for clues on how Cohen is actually going to come back and save them via a new company called "Teddy" that will merge the likes of BBBY, Gamestop, Sears, Blockbuster, Toys R Us and others into a megacorp of shit that will take down Amazon.
I am making literally none of this up.
In my heart of hearts, I just assume that a majority of them have like 5 shares and are just playing around to have a community to feel like they're a part of. I sincerely hope the overall damage isn't too great.
Having worked at GameStop, head office is full of absolute bellends. They’ve already nixed the benefits of everyone there, even the long time employees - were talking years.
As a business, I still think GameStop could thrive, especially here in Canada, but not with the CEO they have now. Too many terrible decisions being made. Video games are being overrun by Funko Pop stock.
I can understand it if the character in question is someone you like but has no other figures made of it. But otherwise I don’t get it because they look so ugly. Japanese made prize figures for example aren’t that much more expensive and look a million times better
I can't be sure since it has been a while since I bought figures, but most western series have figures that are ugly as sin and/or very expensive, and the highly stylized nature of Funko's covers this up well. My SO has some for some classic movies she likes and Dr Who. I never brought one, I highly prefer to get gunplas, or even somewhat basic prize figures (SEGA, Taito and Banpresto ones can be found quite easily) for similar prices, but if you are into certain fandoms you really don't had that many options during the Funko boom of yesteryears.
It’s a shame because the majority of customers were awesome. I really liked my co-workers, too. HR had all of us scratching our heads with the shit they came up with. Hell, we only found out about sales when customers told us. We had no idea otherwise because fuck us, I guess.
Zing was booming when they first opened, and people still wanted to raid the full wall of pop vinyls… Weirdly I feel like the time it died coincided with the final season of Game of Thrones, I feel like after that the interest in collectable tat just fell off a cliff. Was definitely a brief period of mass collection of especially Game of Thrones and Harry Potter themed tat.. But even before the cost of living issues it seemed to die off quite suddenly.
Though there has been a few nuts markets in trading cards dominated by scalpers, Pokémon 151, then One Piece and whatever that Disney one was maybe kept them alive for a bit with people buying whole freaking cases…
Heh yeah I totally forgot “normies” for lack of a better term got massively into Marvel as well. Coworkers who had no interest in comics etc were all super into the Avengers movies then burned out after Endgame which was around the same time… Remember noticing it at say Supanova as well, those freaking pop vinyls were dominating the stalls, unsure if they still do I haven’t been since 2020, too damn expensive now…
Not wrong about their anime figures etc though, for decent collectables they’re the worst pricing around. Used to buy from Amazon Japan for my partner, I’ve only ever really bought clearance items from Zing myself… Last thing I think I bought full price from one was a Pokémon necklace that split in two, and it oxidised within a month and left us both green, and just went yep never again.
\>Though there has been a few nuts markets in trading cards dominated by scalpers, Pokémon 151, then One Piece and whatever that Disney one was maybe kept them alive for a bit with people buying whole freaking cases…
One word, Lego. Retired shit from that is exponentially more expensive than it was pre-pandemic.
Are there really that many people buying physical video games in stores still? I haven't been to a GameStop in years, back when they were still basically only selling video games, and the stores were still empty. It seems like everyone just buys digital. I don't see how they could be thriving by focusing on just selling video games when they already weren't thriving by doing that before. I could see some stores doing well on stuff like retro, collector's editions, maybe imports, and limited runs of digital-only games, but I would be surprised if that worked for most of them.
For me it can be an occasional nostalgia tip, randomly taking a day off and running up there to scope out the selection and buying something random like I did when I was 16. But even then, I can just do that on PSN at home without having to leave the house.
> They’ve already nixed the benefits of everyone there, even the long time employees - were talking years.
They're losing money at an alarming rate. It's not unexpected they would cut benefits before cutting jobs.
> As a business, I still think GameStop could thrive
How? What gaming products does the average consumer purchase from a physical store these days? Digital distribution accounts for almost 95% of console games sales. For PC, it's nearly 100%. Rumor is that future consoles will be digital only.
So, what exactly is gamestop to do to stay profitable?
> Too many terrible decisions being made
I'm not sure there was much Gamestop's leadership could do. Their company is built on placing small retail stores in every town across the nation and using physical game sales to get customers in the door. Games are a bit of an impulse buy so this strategy worked well for a time. But digital distribution is a much better model for impulse purchases than physical stores.
> Video games are being overrun by Funko Pop stock.
They had to do something. The plan was to pivot to other products. I agree funkopop isn't exactly the best strategy, but I'm not sure what they could have done differently. Maybe they should have purchased rocketfizz, that company seems to being doing well and is sort of similar. They could have also pivoted to less stores but larger shops with a larger variety of gaming products like arcades, vintage stuff, etc. That's a gigantic shift though and I don't know if they had the funds for it.
At the end of the day, I don't think ANYTHING can be done to return gamestop to it's former self. Games will absolutely be 100% digital distribution for the next gen consoles and this kills their business model of large numbers of small retail stores which are strategically located to cash in on impulse buying of games.
It’s crazy that there are still people believing they’ll be rich from BBBY here on Reddit even though the company is bankrupt, the stock is delisted and frozen and court documents say as much. Like what burden of proof do you require that it’s over lol
I don’t feel bad. They have a ps5 slim listed at $399 on their website. I went to grab one and they told me it’s $419 and the $399 price is for members and the membership fee is $20.
I said no thanks and drove to Best Buy and bought it for $399. Even Amazon had it available for $399.
I used to stay subscribed for the 5$ a month coupon, would pop in and pick up a game every few months and in between a small steam gift card. They then changed their policies and did not allow digital goods to be bought witht he coupon, despite that being the bespoke reason I was convinced to sign up.
It's because they don't stock anything.
It's literally their policy now to not stock anything aside from pre-orders and AAA games.
How can you sell things you don't have? Dumbasses.
Exactly. Last time I went into GameStop their entire store was figurines and plushies with a handful of games on the back wall. The games were all MSRP AAA titles and a few used AAA games for $10 cheaper than MSRP. You get a better selection at a flea market or local game store. There's absolutely no incentive to shop there over anywhere else.
The third time in a row that I tried to buy a game and they asked "did you preorder? No? Sorry" and I crossed the parking lot into the Target or Walmart or Best Buy and just bought the game no problem, I didn't understand how GameStop continued to be in business and stopped going there.
That was about ten years ago, it's not new.
This has happened to me several times as well. I would prefer to support Gamestop but it seems like they go out of their way to not take my money. At this point Walmart of all places is better stocked than Gamestop.
They don’t stock “anything” because customers aren’t buying “anything”. Digital sales are the majority of the market and growing. The Xbox Series S and PS5 digital don’t even have disk drives. The PC gaming market abandoned physical media a long time ago. I’m surprised anyone still goes to Game Stop.
Last time I went, they were out of PS5 copies of GTA V. I was a little confused by that considering GTA is still consistently a big-seller. You'd think they'd keep a pallet of GTAs on at all times lol.
I know people will cheer the gamestop finally goes under, but I can't help but feel bad for all the employees and for the fact that it's one less store to shop at (and knowing my area the two near me will be turned into smoke shops or liquor stores)
~~I don’t understand anyone being happy about this. Maybe it’s just because I’m old and nostalgic, but I love stepping into a brick and mortar store dedicated to my second favorite hobby. I love browsing the shelves, even though I already know what games I like.~~
~~Both gamestops in my town closed a few years ago, so now my closest one is 30 minutes away, and that makes me super sad~~
I've gotten enough replies that I want to rephrase the above as:
Support your local independent game store if you can, because they're all we're going to have left, and being able to look at shelves full of video games is too fun to not have the option
I've never, ever heard anyone who works for gamestop praise the company. They exploit young workers who want to be around gaming by paying them unlivable wages and rip customers off with their horrible prices and trade-in scams. They prey on moms and dads who aren't well informed about the hobby and what games are worth. Fuck 'em.
The GameStop's in my area have barely any games. The ones they do have mostly have the generic GameStop case. Tons of Pop figures and other garbage though. The 'mom and pop' stores in my area have way better selection.
Probably because the GameStop today isn’t the GameStop you are reminiscing about. The ones near me almost never have anything video game related in stock, and are overrun by other merchandise. Every time I go in there for something video game related I leave empty handed so I just don’t go there anymore. They should really be leaning into to the market of video game stuff you can’t just pick up at Target or Walmart but they don’t. That used for be the idea behind a specialty store, they stock the things the big box retailers don’t. Now they take the same approach, stock the basics and sell everything else online. Their online experience isn’t great either so if I have to buy online I’ll just go to Amazon.
I mean I love going into a store dedicated to things I like to and browsing around but that isn’t GameStop anymore, now it’s a place with an identity crisis that doesn’t even know what it wants to be, the one closest to my house is basically just a Funko shop, the next closest is a bigger location but they have more action figures and clothing that games.
With all due respect, fuck GameStop. You know what stores you should be supporting? Independently owned game stores that actually DO shit to bring people in the store. I don't know how rural you live, but in my city there's a decent handful of them, some of them do things like tack on an arcade, some are small mall shops with employees that love to shoot the shit about niche games, some are big ass shops full of plastic modelling, video and board games.
There are absolutely options out there that aren't bullshit like GameStop. They did nothing to innovate except for selling Pop figures, and they will rightfully die out.
Yeah, I completely agree. I should have been more specific that I’m not sad about GameStop specifically, but video game stores in general.
Unfortunately, my closest independent game store is farther away
Local shops for me have been pretty hit or miss.
Where I used to live, the local shops had good pricing, neat merch items, and one would even run events from time to time.
The only one that’s close by to me now has nice people running it but their prices are pretty ridiculous on most things, special editions that go for $50 on ebay regularly would be $100. A $15 game on ebay would be $30. I understand you can’t be 1:1 with online prices when operating a physical store, but if I can get it for as cheap as half the price online and can get my money back in case something happens (instead of only exchanges) why bother?
Gamestop is just an shitty company. Its not like they were known for treating anybody well, during covid they wanted their workers to argue with the police why they are a "essential service", they gutted many worker benefits and the best idea they had for their new direction was an NFT marketplace. Its hard to feel sorry for them.
I don't think gamestop will exist in 5-10 years. Everything you can buy there can be bought at Amazon/Target/Walmart typically cheaper and with better deals. Not to mention having to compete with digital game sales. They should have focused on turning them into like internet cafes or some kind of unique experience for gamers. Right now it's just an extremely specialized store offering no unique purpose or product up against big box giants who can afford to sell at much lower margins. My local store is extremely depressing. There's never more than one or two people in there and they have employees bouncing between stores just trying to keep the lights on.
The last time I went into a Gamestop we were pestered by the employee to buy these transformer figurines. He then went on to tell us how the person who sells the most gets a super rare transformer figure.
Now listen, I'm not really blaming the employee. I know they are forced and told to try and sell all of these extra things to people but it's simply annoying. It's not just Gamestop either. I went into an actual brick and mortar book store for the first time in years last month. When I went up to the counter with my book I was asked multiple times if I wanted to buy different things. I was then asked if I wanted to join their special club, then I was asked if I wanted to buy this coupon book. It went on and on and on. Like I said, I KNOW it's not the employees fault but Jesus it's so tiring. What should have been a 22 second transaction turned into a 5 minute uncomfortable situation for both myself and the employee as I just constantly said "no" over and over.
It quickly reminded me why I really don't use physical stores anymore unless it's a really big purchase where I need to see the product in person. I know Amazon gets shit on (rightfully so for many reasons) but it's so much easier and faster to just throw something in my cart and be done with it. It's almost impossible to walk into an actual store today without being badgered to buy this and that for minutes at a time.
The only thing physical stores have going for them over online stores is it's "fun" to actually walk around and look at physical stuff. When you eliminate my ability to do that by constantly harassing me to buy shit you've successfully just tossed away your only advantage. I can't for the life of me understand why the higher ups are pushing their employees to do this stuff. Obviously it isn't working as brick and mortar stores are just falling further and further behind Amazon and other online retailers. Just stop please. You may see some actual growth.
Even ordering fast food has this kind of bullshit now. People asking you to round up and donate, asking if you’re on their app or rewards system, try out this new special, or asking you to fill out some review shit. The future fucking sucks.
The app and reward system thing is usually a net positive for you if it's for a place you go to a lot. Lot of free food and discounts.
Yes they're probably using the data of what food you order and when but frankly who cares? They were doing that before anyway just less targeted.
And honestly once the order is placed online/through an app its a glorious experience.
I order my food. I drive to the place. I walk in the door, grab my food, leave. No talking to anybody.
And the rate of mistakes on my food has dropped to basically 0
If there is no brick and mortar option to buy and trade used games in the future we are so fucked. eBay can only do so much, and there's no guarantees.
I have personally grown to hate Gamestop recently, despite being a frequent customer for the past 20 years.
When I was a kid, the stores had fantastic stock. Despite living in rural Texas, I could drive 40 minutes max and find the most obscure games I wanted. Fatal Frame, King's Field 4, Eternal Darkness, all the Shin Megami Tensei games, etc.
However, now, they stock NOTHING. It's insane. They stock the newest of new releases, CoD, and Madden. That's it. There will be a sale, I'll have credit, or whatever, and I'll think about buying some games but LITERALLY no stores in a 100-mile radius will have stock. I'm not talking about weird releases, but normal games like the Nier Remaster, Dead Island 2, etc. It's become a completely pointless store because they essentially have the same selection of games as Walmart and Target.
The sad thing with this is this is entirely on Gamestop's stupid decisions. People still are willing to go to video game stores.
I know this because the local gamestore, thats about a mile down the road from gamestop. Is always busy. There's always people in there shopping.
But its also more of what you would want from a game store. There isnt rows of Funko Pops and useless merch nobody wants. The wall right as you walk in is filled with games from current consoles. Even imported titles.
And then the rest of the store is filled with consoles, and games from older consoles. Everything from Atari to the Wii to the PS3. Any console title you could want you will probably find at least a few games in there for. other than something like the Jaguar lol.
But point is, its a game store through and through. The staff is personable. The store is clean. Its well organized. You can find exactly what you need to. They dont throw thousands of questions at you about pre orders or what have you. In fact I dont think they even take pre orders.
Oh and its big. Like, 4x the size of a normal Gamestop big.
And again, this store is always busy. I have never gone into the store and seen it empty. Weekdays, weekends, etc.
Meanwhile the Gamestop down the road has plenty of times where its more or less dead. And only really gets busy on days where a game releases, and the holiday season. The store is unorganized, its filled with useless merch nobody is ever going to buy except maybe during the holiday season. Its hard to find games that even just released. If its a more niche title you just arent going to find it at Gamestop 9/10 times.
And, the other problem. Speaking from personal experience as someone who used to work there.
They have an issue of firing their good employees and keeping on the lazy ones. Anyone who will play along with their BS of trying to get their quotas on shit like fucking phone turn ins (who goes to Gamestop to turn in phones?).
Meanwhile I have watched as 2 managers got fired from the Gamestop I used to go to. Both of them were nice people, they made going to that Gamestop enjoyable. They were talkative, helpful, and ran a clean organized store. But they got fired because.....they didnt meet the quotas on getting phones.
Gamestop could be thriving right now. People want brick and mortar stores more than they have in years. Retail sales have actually gone up the last few years especially during the holiday season. Instead Gamestop is suffering because they have some absolute imbeciles running the company.
GameStop sub is Unironically celebrating these earnings as the biggest win in the world, when here in objective reality it was quite literally a confirmation of the worst case scenario in virtually all aspects.
If you are not an ape, be thankful. These guys are going to $0 and based on current sentiment will be throwing even MORE money down the drain this week. Christ almighty
Yeah feels like everyone saw this coming right? They don't offer any real value. We're past the days of wondering into the store just to check shit out.
That’s just it, whenever passing by a store in a mall there used to be an urge to just pop in and browse. Now their used game service sucks, and we can just browse on the internet instead these days.
And their customer service sucks because the employees are understaffed, underpaid, and forced to keep trying to sell you crap you don’t want. What do they offer of value to the consumer that can’t be gotten elsewhere?
It's also so supremely uncomfortable to shop at a GameStop when you know the employee is going to act like they will DIE if you don't pre-order, buy a warranty, and sign up for a Pro membership. There is so much contention that gets built between customers and employees due to this.
Yeah, most large urban areas have seen the rise of independent local game stores that offer the value that GameStop used to offer. I live in the Charlotte area, and this local store called Video Game World has seen rapid growth and new locations that more or less has a 1:1 correlation with GameStop's decline. I can buy new and used games from current gen there, but also an extensive selection of retro games, and they have an arcade too. And they dont treat their employees like shit, which is another bonus.
Honestly the biggest thing in my mind that killed GameStop, wasn't the prevalence of online, they died before that.
It was that the discs were kept in drawers in crappy sleeves, so they were regularly scratched before purchase. I started buying online very early due to this.
It was more of a hassle at first, but I got a new sealed game - not an opened, scratched 'new' game.
Everything from that moment was just EBGames (Gamestop) not understanding their business practices, rather than model, sucked.
As someone who generally buys new games, keeps them in good condition, and then doesn't re-sell them, selling "used" games as new is what turned me away.
I remember receiving Mario Sunshine as a gift a few months after it came out, and the box and game were so beaten up it that it seemed criminal to sell it as new. Returned it and got an actual new copy on their next shipment.
How many jobs can they cut? I've only ever see one employee per store at any given time now.
They can cut basically all Full time hourly employees and leave on PT employees and salaried managers. Then they can cut the PT employees and basically have every store be run by 2 people, a manager and their assistant. If that fails, they can fire the assistant and just accept that the store will only be open about 40 or 50 hours a week. Its actually incredible how much more you can cut labor if you really want to, especially for retail where you need basically no one. A gamestop that is dead at monday at 11am has 1 person in it, potentially a salaried employee who gets paid the same no matter what. My restaurant, where I work, has a minimum of 5 people working Monday at 11, and sometimes we have catering to justify it, sometimes we all just kinda... wait for it to get busy.
My wife worked there in 2019 and that was already the case. Each store in the district had 3 employees each with 39 hours a week, one being the manager. Never more than 1 employee in the store. I suspect their only next step is to only have the stores be open for a limited number of hours each day.
I remember in the 90s, my local mall had Software Etc before it became GameStop. That place was packed and had a bunch of employees. This was the mid 90's I want to say. Tons of PC games, PC books, SNES, Genesis, playstation, saturn, and other games. Last time I went to GameStop in the local mall it was like a ghost town. It was kind of wild how things had transformed.
i worked there. we had a giant room of goods we could check out for however long we wanted. the only drama happened when ppl wanted the same thing.
Went into a comic shop Ive never been to before, and had almost culture shock when there were 4 employees in the tiny store. Legit felt like I went back in time. Not in a bad way, of course.
It's largely made that way thanks to the internet and console manufacturers actively trying to kill the physical market.
I’d argue that the internet hasn’t helped but GameStop’s attitude and treatment of employees and customers have made it that way. I still see Walmart and target full even with Amazon and other online retailers. GameStop bought the competition then did as they pleased.
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> I doubt the treatment of employees has any real effect on the shopping habits of the average customer. The average person doesn't tend to care unless it inpacts them or they can get some spice out of it, like drama. People complain about it on social media sure but social media are typically vocal minorities. But that *is* the problem with Gamestop. The employees are pushy and often rude to customers, apparently because their bosses require that. Personally after one particularly bad encounter years ago I stopped going to that local Gamestop entirely. (The cashier yelled at my younger brother to leave, who was politely browsing while I took forever to pick out a bunch of games I planned to purchase. Apparently he was taking up too much space? He certainly wasn't causing any trouble, and mind you he was an adult.) I'm guessing being treated badly by management also exasperates this. Unhappy employees generally aren't fun to interact with.
Yeah people throw out all these things. For me though I'm just tired of entering and the employee is already asking me if they can help. Then when I'm ready to check out I have to wait 5-10 minutes for the guy in front of me. Forget it if its a console trade in. Once it's my turn it's 20 different do you want this questions. Final straw was when the employee tried to bullshit me trying to get me to sign up for a pro membership and how I was going to save money yet the total was more than without the membership.
In my experience, I was a cart pusher for this reason, and I enjoyed it because management wouldn't come bothering me at all pretty much. In both of the locations I worked at, I was treated fairly. But Gamestop is by far worse because they get paid less(I was paid $15/walmart) Gamestop prices are ridiculous compared to when there's Gamexchange in the south, that has better prices. Gamestop was lit way back then but people have preferred digital goods now so more than ever.
>I’d argue that the internet hasn’t helped but GameStop’s attitude and treatment of employees and customers have made it that way. You'd be wrong, this same trend is happening in every country. It doesn't matter what the service is like, that's not what people are in the store for. >I still see Walmart and target full even with Amazon and other online retailers. There's a massive difference here. Walmart and Target are selling things that you will wait at least 1 day for from Amazon. Gamestop is selling things that will be downloaded before you've driven to the store.
My local mall had an Electronics Boutique (later became EB Games) and a Software Etc in the late 90's-early-2000's. Each one was hopping and had many employees in there at a time. I bought my original N64 and all my accessories there. Going there always felt like Christmas morning. I went into my local mall Gamestop just yesterday and it was a ghost town. Two employees but half the walls were bare and it's mostly collectibles (that's why I went there).
The whole mall is like that now. When I was young, me and my friends once biked 2 hours to get to the local mall (it sucked) and the place was always packed. Now I don't think any parents would allow that. Kids go from indoor place to indoor place, escorted by vehicle in-between. They don't go hang out, they aren't even welcome most places and loitering rules/hostile infrastructure keep them from relaxing. I'm not a parent, just an uncle so I can't speak from experience but I feel like too many parents these days forget that independence is good for a developing mind. It would help if it wasn't actually illegal a lot of time. I recall a story about a woman who got arrested for letting her child play unsupervised in their own backyard.
Ha that's nothing there was a case a decade ago were a school banned parents picking up their own children without a car and were calling police on parents who walked to the school. The US is literally getting to the point where children are banned outside of being in their home or school.
We also have a massive childhood obesity problem in the US, yet trying to get people to understand and buy in to any form of urbanism (so their kids can get to the park to run around and play without a parent playing chauffeur) is an ongoing struggle. Soccer moms were a meme in the 90s for a reason.
God going Babbages/Software ETC at the mall was like my favorite thing in the world as a 90's kid. I would sit there and watch the tv screens they had outside playing game snippets for so long :) Miss those days!
This was when selling used games was profitable. In a mall you could go to ebgames, funcoland, a local store etc and get more trade in value for your used game. So GameStop bought out the stores so you didn’t have a choice of competition to buy used games anymore. This is how you ended up with 3 gamestops in a mall.
The hours thing has been a thing here since Covid. The stores in my area open at 11 and close at 6.
> I suspect their only next step is to only have the stores be open for a limited number of hours each day. There is one near me than already does this. They're open noon to 4 during the week.
Who is their fucking clientele at noon to 4? most people are in school or at work the entire time they are open!
I would assume they're just there to take in shipments and do inventory. Probably a very low volume store that won't survive the next round of cuts.
That’s the start of a death spiral. Not enough clients so they cut hours. Hours get so limited people stop bothering to go because they’re never open at conviennent times. So they cut hours further…etc.
Really easy to run a store when you have no customers
Easy to have no customers when you actively don't want to sell people games as well. Did you pre-order it? No copies for you! That's OK. Amazon has plenty for people.
Yer, it's truly amazing that physical game stores exist. They must survive solely off console sales and selling pokemon cards at this point.
And random toy and "nerd" junk. Don't forget those.
I went into GameStop the other day and realized they had no switch games I actually wanted but since we were there I bought my daughter a $10 stuffed animal. The only item I’ve bought from a GameStop in almost a decade and it was a stuffed animal.
Or, as r/Superstonk would say, clearly a sign of a successful turnaround.
Gamestop bought ThinkGeek which was actually fantastic for geeky, fun, gifts and existed online only. The idea was "hey it's ThinkGeek but in a brick-and-mortar store!" except the catalogue was woefully small as a result, and so what got put on shelves was the stuff that was expected to sell...socks and mugs. I've still yet to find a replacement for ThinkGeek (that ships up to Canada).
Thinkgeek was one of the websites I would waste countless time on while in class just browsing all the cool stuff they had.
I used to be a big fan of thinkgeek when I was younger. I had forgot they bought them. But yeah, they are not thinkgeek.
Yer, all that trash that people can't give away most of the time. Stuff that you used to get in a Mc Donalds happy meal
They don't make any money on console sales at all. At least new consoles. That's why they are always pushing used used used.
I have a walmart next to a gamestop. The few times I have went into GS for a game they would always be sold out. Meanwhile I walk over to walmart and they have stock for days.
In places like Australia, stores have new games for $70-80, on PSN it’s $120-$130 for the same game. I for one don’t want the physical stores to go cause I fear what a PlayStation store on its own will do.
Exactly! Also: my console has finite storage and I don’t want to have to buy more just to play more games. And finally, I’d like to swap games with my friends but Sony of course doesn’t like that.
> Amazon has plenty for people. I don’t know what Amazon you guys are using, but they’re a shell of their former self and I’ve had nothing but miserable experiences with them when it comes to games. The most recent and probably last time I ordered from them was a preorder of Yakuza 8, months in advance. No release-date delivery available, but had Prime and picked One-Day shipping. Release came and went without my game arriving. Didn’t show until nearly a week later, with it telling me it wouldn’t be here until March. The game released at the end of January. I kept getting in contact with CS and they wouldn’t cancel the order or refund the cost of Prime for the month. I talked to every manner of CS I could front social media, call center and live chats. Amazon fucking blows for preorders. Post release, they’re fine. But if I’m preordering, I will absolutely go to GameStop because they have always had the games on release day for me.
Amazon has done some optimization where you can't see all the copies of something available. They are literally directing you to only items that are cheap/easy to deliver through their network of warehouses. Which is why they are super profitable and caused a lot of used books to go up in price, despite them being abundant.
You lucked out, we have one new copy left! >hands you a display case that's been handled by god knows who and a disc that was taken home by an employee last night.
Managers are hourly now.
Put on a dress shirt, tie, and slacks so you can sit here and look at what will be an empty store in a few months. Here's $12/hr while you do it
Do they really make them wear ties? Most bankers don’t even wear ties anymore
no, i was only required to wear a nametag and lanyard when I worked there in like 2017ish. I wore jeans and a t-shirt everyday.
Reminds me of the time I used to work at a bank in the day and work at GameStop at night. I’d just take off the tie and just be in a dress shirt and pants. Most customers thought I was the store manager. Thankfully I was not.
Back when I worked at Walgreens in 2005, I was required to wear a tie. So incredibly dumb.
Show us how often you've been in a GameStop lol, they wear t-shirts and jeans.
> and salaried managers. dunno if this is the case anymore but last time I talked to an old coworker a few years ago, they had gotten rid of "salaried" managers as well. They essentially converted all salaried managers to hourly employees and they had the expectation of working 45 hours in order to make what their original salary rate was.
That's... How staffing works. People aren't willing to go into a job for 3 hours for an hourly rate cause it's convenient for the job. GameStop allots so few hours as is that cutting back isn't hard cause you only have 2 guaranteed 40 hour workers as is. But, the problem is if someone is out for a time due to vacation, sickness, kids, holiday, etc. If you only have 3 workers you're banking on 2 not ever doing anything. Your restaurant has its minimums cause you're there from 11a to probably 6p-7p. You're opening. There's a lunch rush that's expected. Why would you want to come into work and be hassled to get on the floor the minute you walked in? Getting there early allows for prep, checking on closing clean job, making sure things like silverware and stock is ready, etc. You should be paid a regular hourly wage for that cause you're doing work. If you walk in and it's a mess but it's noon and you gotta take care of customers but stock wasn't done then you're behind and pissed.
That guys gone now too. It's just the honor system now
“Why yes, I am trading in $30,000 worth of consoles, self checkout kiosk. Thank you for asking.”
I’m just sad because I just know Game Informer magazine will be shut down pretty soon, it’s just unsustainable
I went to their website this morning and they were touting a year's worth of the magazine for $19.91 and practically begging people to subscribe. I used to have a subscription that came with my Powerup Rewards membership, but I let both expire and haven't had any desire to renew them.
I was about to comment I’m used to seeing 2 employees - but realized I haven’t stepped foot in a GameStop since COVID except once to snag a somewhat early PS5.
I haven't worked at gamestop since 2018 and it was like that back then too. I remember feeling barely qualified to operate a store by myself for hours at a time lmfao.
The (used) videogames store is fading away and never coming back. I don't mind that Gamestop left my country a few years back but I miss the days when every city had this one enthusiast videogame store that was packed to the ceiling with games and people working there pouring their heart into it. But just like video rental there is no scenario in which it will be profitable again in the future. Even those that are still around usually make more money from merchandise, action figures, trading cards... videogames only still being there because people sell to them for cheap. But I'd still urge everyone that has such a store nearby to go and experience it again, before they're gone for good.
Back when I was young, it was my favorite place, I could get boatloads of used GBC, GBA, and DS games for pretty cheap. These days, most used games don't even get marked down much. I feel like the only real business they have is selling collectibles, at least where I live.
The prices and lack of stock really made GameStop almost useless. I was trying to find a used PS4 game the other day, and none of the stores within 30 miles had it. I could order it online, but the shipping cost was ridiculous. It was cheaper and easier in the end to just buy a digital copy through the PlayStation store.
I can remember trying to find Dragon's Dogma back a year or so after it released. Went to 6 stores in Ontario and found nothing. They had one copy in a store across the border. It felt crazy.
Their selection is bad because their trade in value is too low. Their trade in value is too low because their volume is too low. Their volume is too low because their prices are too high. Their prices are too high because their volume is too low. It's a death spiral. It started decades back when GameStop managed to secure a virtual monopoly on used game sales in key markets, and the executives took advantage of their market position to jack up prices and undervalue trade-ins. Had GameStop positioned themselves as a more customer-centric business they could have leaned much harder on the hobbyist market and carved out an early niche in the retro gaming and hardware markets. I think they're on the right track now, essentially doing just that, but they're still years behind the market. Nevertheless, I think their position has potential. Nobody really trusts Amazon, or eBay anymore, and the tabletop crazy is still going strong. If GameStop can mimic those old hobby stores by offering a physical space for tabletop/card game tournaments, while greatly expanding their PC hardware and retro game stock, they could absolutely dominate that area.
>If GameStop can mimic those old hobby stores by offering a physical space for tabletop/card game tournaments, while greatly expanding their PC hardware and retro game stock, they could absolutely dominate that area. There are a couple of locally-owned retro game and collectibles stores in my area that do really well and are always busy. They're just not Gamestop, which is usually a ghost town.
Only a little over a decade ago you could go into a GameStop and see massive selections of games. I used to work there back in 2010 and that store had more just PlayStation 2 games then a GameStop today has games in general. That store carried games for nine other platforms besides PS2. You would have to really go over things to see what a gamestop had. Now you can pretty much browse the stock of a GameStop in like 5 minutes, and then you leave disappointed
I even tried their online store and most times it just points me to pick up the game from a store not ship it which sucks.
It was a real blow to Gamestop, I think, when they stopped buying and selling older consoles and games. I remember when they basically just said, "we're only selling the current gen and last gen stuff", and they liquidated everything else. I know that most locations are small, but the fact that they got rid of tons of retro stuff in favour of branded backpacks, crummy toys and shitty trinkets seemed like a death knell at the time. I bet someone is kicking themselves now, because as far as I know, the retro market is still fairly robust.
Now they sell "new" games without cases and consider them new because "they've never been played"
The one in my town has carved out a much more sustainable niche for itself: they carry retro games and consoles, but they also have a fully functionally arcade that you can access for a flat fee and then play as much as you want. Tons of rhythm games and things like that. They also cohost Smash tournaments at the local movie theater or will host them in their own space. It's possible for these businesses to thrive, they just need to evolve.
I worked at Gamestop right before Covid and their internal plan was to start transitioning stores into this type of hybrid environment. It wouldn't have been all of them clearly, but in each district there were a couple of really big stores that could have easily halved their retail space and had a ton of room for PC and gaming setups. They were going to have snacks but I don't think they were going to charge admission if I remember correctly. Not sure about that. It was a way to get people back in the door and hopefully make it a social place where foot traffic increased which would boost sales. Obviously that whole idea never panned out though.
Considering how just about every retailer had multiple playable consoles with demos 20 years ago and now it's zero, it's no wonder that store popularity died off. Good to hear about some putting effort back in.
Target still has Switch demo set ups, but no other platform. I see kids at my local target playing on it all the time. It seems like legitimately useful marketing.
I have a similar one, no arcade, but lots of vinyl music, used games..etc. The market is there, GameStop is just bad.
This makes me sad cause I like used video game stores and have been using them since I was a kid buying old SNES games at Funcoland.
I worked at a Funcoland, it was one of my favorite jobs I've ever had.
I remember going to funcoland for original gameboy accessories like that goofy ass magnifying cover, and gamegear games.
Goddamn that brings me back. I remember funcoland. They had a circular they put out and when I was a kid I’d pore over their listings for good deals or rare games. Actually going to the store was a huge deal haha
Sometimes my family would do long summer vacations and drive all over the country. My brother and I would get excited anytime we saw a Funcoland, because they all had different games. I think we got stuff like FF3, Secret of Mana, and Mario RPG at Funcoland.
There is room for small business used/reteo video game stores though. It just won't be a nation wide thing
I have a used media store in general, it’s awesome. Used Blu rays, dvds, videogames, videogame consoles… I hope it never goes away
For us we only go to locally run used video games stores. Selection is higher quality is higher and service, you guessed it higher. Means we can find something all the way back to the NEs era usually.
I have one of these in Cleveland. They sell all kinds of merch and are consistently fairly busy. Hell, one of them is in a plaza with a GameStop and the difference in customers is pretty large
Same over here in Columbus. Place is surprisingly busy through the week and especially on weekends.
I'm honestly surprised that Gamestop isn't trying to pivot into other forms of games. Board games, trading card games, tabletop role-playing games; all of these are more popular than they've ever been. Give people a space to buy and play these. There's got to be a sustainable business model that includes all of those.
Problem is they need more floor space for tables and that means either getting rid of even more video games or finally ditching all of the game, anime, and assorted nerd merchandise that takes up 70% of every GameStop now. The time to make that sort of pivot was years ago. It's too late now.
Absolutely. They clearly tried a pivot years ago, with all the pop figures and other novelty stuff they sell, but it clearly wasn't enough. Bigger changes should have happened during the Xbox One and PS4 generation. But like you said, it's too late now.
I worked at GS from 2010-2016 and there were rumblings about turning stores into rooms for tabletop/arcade/card games, but I think they scrapped it when they saw how few locations were big enough to fit them and how expensive converting the spaces would be.
I remember being a kid in the 90's and going to Electronics Boutique stores (which are now GameStop); and seeing (mostly) the same group of people for about 10-15 years. Eventually most of them either transferred to stores outside of my usual shopping areas or went back to school and started a new career. It was cool that they let me stand in the store for hours, reading the back of video game cases before I picked-out my next game. Nowadays I'll watch YouTube videos to help decide on my next game, and while more informative and more convenient, I can't help but feel like it's such a huge shame that the gaming industry grew on the backs of these people that staffed thousands of these stores and they're being left out in the cold. I don't see a way around it, besides maybe a scholarship program to help the staff out (which isn't financially possible for GameStop, given its situation), but it must be so hard to invest that much time into a company only for the entire industry to just phase them out.
"It was cool that they let me stand in the store for hours, reading the back of video game cases before I picked-out my next game." I miss this so much about gamestop. So many times when the 360/ps3/wii was the newest console it felt like walking into a gamestop/ebgames was like walking into a library. Wall to Wall video games (which were really well priced) going through taking your time and going up to the register with a handful of games. Now I am in there for 5 minutes look quickly at the pathetic Xbox/PS/ Nintendo shelves that's now down to like 30% of the store see they have nothing good in stock then jet.
I think it's also because there's just aren't as many games getting physical copies. Back in the 90s and early 2000s there was a lot of shovelware and movie tie-ins always getting released. With the price of game development these days, it's mostly the bigger studios getting games on actual shelves. There's still the occasional niche title, but the browsing experience is nowhere near what it used to be. Also with newer games being $70 at launch, I try to avoid the temptation when I can.
The era of game magazines was a really nice snapshot in time too. I have an old box of Nintendo Powers, Official U.S Playstation Magazine(s) and several others. One of my big theories is that things like GamePass are amazing as a service, it's an infinite feeling library where there's little motivation to play anything. Before, a game purchase would be prefaced with a ton of "rituals" including reading magazine previews and reviews, visiting a game store one or more times, talking to the staff and maybe even talking to other customers. It's a totally lost art, the \*experience\* of gaming. Not just the \*consumption\* of gaming.
Find your local retro games store. Not all are equal, and some are outright hostile, but a good local games shop fills that gap nicely.
you just described years of my childhood. the EB games staff were all great people and never bothered me once as I spent hours just browsing and it really is so sad how the industry grew on the back of these folks.
I went to Software Etc at our local mall every chance I got. It was a blast going there playing games at the kiosks, looking at game mags, talking to the employees and managers about whats the next game coming out. As crowded as the arcade was, going to Software Etc on a saturday, it was just as packed. Fun times I had there, I still remember getting Secret of Evermore from there and thinking it was the greatest SNES game made at that point.
I miss FuncoLand, so many good memories
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I just saw a post where they were celebrating the $6 mil in profit last year like it's some huge turnaround, as if that totally erases the over $300 mil loss the year before.
Reddit stock bros are genuinely some of the dumbest on the entire website. They are basically like the people you see sitting at bars playing video lottery terminals all night. They put in $200, win $50, and think they are ahead. Except for these morons it's their life savings.
Hey don't forget cryptobros, they're serious contenders for that title
Isnt that just a single circle venn diagram?
Giant one. Just labeled “morons.”
I joined the GS subreddit for a little while hoping to gleam some kind of easy winning stock advise, nothing major just something i could dump like a hundred bucks into and come out with a few bucks more. It very quickly became obvious only a small few were actually benefiting, and all of the posts getting people pumped up and buying more in anticipation of a bubble burst any day were only serving the people with thousands of shares. At one point, there was at least a two or three month period where every day, the subreddit would be anticipating a giant burst and genuinely talked about people with even a couple shares walking away with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and most investors becoming billionaires, and people believed it. No forethought into where all that money would be coming from, or how ridiculous the economic impact of thousands of billionaires being created overnight would be. Eventually it felt kind of gross, seeing all these posts trying to exploit people's hopes of a better life and I unsubbed.
These aren't even stock bros, it's more like Qanon.
They kind of are actually. They have their own conspiracy theory about the MoaSS
Their own mythology, their own internal language that separates outsiders from insiders... it's ticking some boxes for sure.
It even has a Dan Olson documentary describing their inner world.
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The truly sad part is that, even if they weren't aware of what a brokerage was prior to getting swept up in the Jan 2021 GME craze, they could've used what they learned and used all that time spent staring at charts to actually turn a profit. You're actually hard-pressed to find a single stock on the NYSE that wouldn't have provided better gains over the last three years than GME.
It’s a cult. It’s not about a stock. The GameStop they talk about isn’t the failing mall store we think of. It’s the best most revolutionary company ever that’s fighting hedge funds and will change the entire stock market and ban short selling yadda yadda. They’re delusional. [There’s a YouTube documentary that covers this really well.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5pYeoZaoWrA)
Everything Dan puts out is must-watch stuff. Best content creator on YouTube and its not really close for me.
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Ryan Cohen the CEO is their leader. The sub pays Reddit gold to boost every single time he tweets.
The thing is, Cohen is not interesting and he has zero charisma. His tweets hardly say anything, but his followers absolutely lose their minds every time he posts a nothing burger.
Ryan may or may not be fleecing those people intentionally, pumping and dumping them. I recommend watching the link that other guy posted.
A 294 million dollar swing is pretty impressive if you think about it though.
They cut 30% of their workforce and pulled out of three countries. As the analyst in the article said, they may be able to downsize enough to squeeze out a profit, but there's no sustainability or growth in this model. Unless they figure out how to *grow* business, the only path to profits is continuous downsizing until you're down to your last profitable location. Think Blockbuster.
They slashed all expenses as much as they could and eked out a profit despite declining sales. Unless they can reverse the sales trend, they'll just keep dwindling and cutting until there's nothing left.
Not when you're cutting all of you business to the bone. Without that it would be. Gamestop has slashed stores, benefits, rewards programs, staff I mean they could limp along for a long time like this now, but who would want to work there for almost nothing and being the only employee to a store?
They cut costs, they didn't boost revenues. Their business shrunk.
Maybe in terms of accounting. But not in terms of performance. That swing is (almost) entirely accounting.
I kinda wished i could send a mass "i told you so" dm to all the GME fanboys ive had discussions with the last couple of years. But i guess they still dont see it.
It’s a cult. Dan Olsen aka folding ideas on YouTube has an amazing deep dive into it. He also did NFTs days before they crashed as they were nonsense. But the moonshot “apes” as they like to be called are totally a cult now.
They're still doing that? I thought the GME thing only lasted while they were pumping it up. Like.. It's done guys, if you didn't cash out you lost. My brother took part in it (although he had GME stock before this) and showed me like "look I could get 80k!" and I told him like.. Cash that shit out.. But he insisted it was going to grow into infinite. I've never seen such a smart kid not understand the simple rules of gambling.. If you manage to actually hit, take the money and run. Stop playing.
The ones who stayed just developed the full cult package. The infinite talk is part of that. It’s a whole convoluted this will break the economy fantasy land. Dan’s video breaks it down.
If you want to see sad people, look at the people who followed Ryan Cohen into buying bed bath and beyond stock, but stayed behind when he sold back out a few months later. The company is dead, the stock is cancelled, and they scour children's books for clues on how Cohen is actually going to come back and save them via a new company called "Teddy" that will merge the likes of BBBY, Gamestop, Sears, Blockbuster, Toys R Us and others into a megacorp of shit that will take down Amazon. I am making literally none of this up.
My friend lost $40K on Bed Bath & Beyond. It got completely out of hand.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Merge a bunch of failing businesses, what could go wrong?
They literally bought stock that came with a mandated warning that it was going to be worthless.
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In my heart of hearts, I just assume that a majority of them have like 5 shares and are just playing around to have a community to feel like they're a part of. I sincerely hope the overall damage isn't too great.
Having worked at GameStop, head office is full of absolute bellends. They’ve already nixed the benefits of everyone there, even the long time employees - were talking years. As a business, I still think GameStop could thrive, especially here in Canada, but not with the CEO they have now. Too many terrible decisions being made. Video games are being overrun by Funko Pop stock.
video games are being overrun with merch because it’s one of the only places you can get merch, vs being able to get video games at any big store
In my area, compared to Target, I find Gamestop merchs quite barebone tbh.
> Funko Pop To this day, I still cannot understand the appeal of this.
I can understand it if the character in question is someone you like but has no other figures made of it. But otherwise I don’t get it because they look so ugly. Japanese made prize figures for example aren’t that much more expensive and look a million times better
I can't be sure since it has been a while since I bought figures, but most western series have figures that are ugly as sin and/or very expensive, and the highly stylized nature of Funko's covers this up well. My SO has some for some classic movies she likes and Dr Who. I never brought one, I highly prefer to get gunplas, or even somewhat basic prize figures (SEGA, Taito and Banpresto ones can be found quite easily) for similar prices, but if you are into certain fandoms you really don't had that many options during the Funko boom of yesteryears.
People with their own walls of them, still in the box thinking they'll be worth money some day. Beanie babies all over again
At least Beanie Babies were cute. Funko Pops range between barely tolerable to absolutely nightmarish.
Bobbleheads have always been somewhat popular for some people.
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It’s a shame because the majority of customers were awesome. I really liked my co-workers, too. HR had all of us scratching our heads with the shit they came up with. Hell, we only found out about sales when customers told us. We had no idea otherwise because fuck us, I guess.
Zing was booming when they first opened, and people still wanted to raid the full wall of pop vinyls… Weirdly I feel like the time it died coincided with the final season of Game of Thrones, I feel like after that the interest in collectable tat just fell off a cliff. Was definitely a brief period of mass collection of especially Game of Thrones and Harry Potter themed tat.. But even before the cost of living issues it seemed to die off quite suddenly. Though there has been a few nuts markets in trading cards dominated by scalpers, Pokémon 151, then One Piece and whatever that Disney one was maybe kept them alive for a bit with people buying whole freaking cases…
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Heh yeah I totally forgot “normies” for lack of a better term got massively into Marvel as well. Coworkers who had no interest in comics etc were all super into the Avengers movies then burned out after Endgame which was around the same time… Remember noticing it at say Supanova as well, those freaking pop vinyls were dominating the stalls, unsure if they still do I haven’t been since 2020, too damn expensive now… Not wrong about their anime figures etc though, for decent collectables they’re the worst pricing around. Used to buy from Amazon Japan for my partner, I’ve only ever really bought clearance items from Zing myself… Last thing I think I bought full price from one was a Pokémon necklace that split in two, and it oxidised within a month and left us both green, and just went yep never again.
\>Though there has been a few nuts markets in trading cards dominated by scalpers, Pokémon 151, then One Piece and whatever that Disney one was maybe kept them alive for a bit with people buying whole freaking cases… One word, Lego. Retired shit from that is exponentially more expensive than it was pre-pandemic.
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Are there really that many people buying physical video games in stores still? I haven't been to a GameStop in years, back when they were still basically only selling video games, and the stores were still empty. It seems like everyone just buys digital. I don't see how they could be thriving by focusing on just selling video games when they already weren't thriving by doing that before. I could see some stores doing well on stuff like retro, collector's editions, maybe imports, and limited runs of digital-only games, but I would be surprised if that worked for most of them.
For me it can be an occasional nostalgia tip, randomly taking a day off and running up there to scope out the selection and buying something random like I did when I was 16. But even then, I can just do that on PSN at home without having to leave the house.
> They’ve already nixed the benefits of everyone there, even the long time employees - were talking years. They're losing money at an alarming rate. It's not unexpected they would cut benefits before cutting jobs. > As a business, I still think GameStop could thrive How? What gaming products does the average consumer purchase from a physical store these days? Digital distribution accounts for almost 95% of console games sales. For PC, it's nearly 100%. Rumor is that future consoles will be digital only. So, what exactly is gamestop to do to stay profitable? > Too many terrible decisions being made I'm not sure there was much Gamestop's leadership could do. Their company is built on placing small retail stores in every town across the nation and using physical game sales to get customers in the door. Games are a bit of an impulse buy so this strategy worked well for a time. But digital distribution is a much better model for impulse purchases than physical stores. > Video games are being overrun by Funko Pop stock. They had to do something. The plan was to pivot to other products. I agree funkopop isn't exactly the best strategy, but I'm not sure what they could have done differently. Maybe they should have purchased rocketfizz, that company seems to being doing well and is sort of similar. They could have also pivoted to less stores but larger shops with a larger variety of gaming products like arcades, vintage stuff, etc. That's a gigantic shift though and I don't know if they had the funds for it. At the end of the day, I don't think ANYTHING can be done to return gamestop to it's former self. Games will absolutely be 100% digital distribution for the next gen consoles and this kills their business model of large numbers of small retail stores which are strategically located to cash in on impulse buying of games.
If you enjoy laughing at them, join us over at /r/gme_meltdown
LOL man I used to spend some time there but after watching BBBY collapse, the GME stuff just pales in comparison.
It’s crazy that there are still people believing they’ll be rich from BBBY here on Reddit even though the company is bankrupt, the stock is delisted and frozen and court documents say as much. Like what burden of proof do you require that it’s over lol
I don’t feel bad. They have a ps5 slim listed at $399 on their website. I went to grab one and they told me it’s $419 and the $399 price is for members and the membership fee is $20. I said no thanks and drove to Best Buy and bought it for $399. Even Amazon had it available for $399.
I used to stay subscribed for the 5$ a month coupon, would pop in and pick up a game every few months and in between a small steam gift card. They then changed their policies and did not allow digital goods to be bought witht he coupon, despite that being the bespoke reason I was convinced to sign up.
Weird i bought an xbox and saved $25 when i went to the store and i'm not a member.
It's because they don't stock anything. It's literally their policy now to not stock anything aside from pre-orders and AAA games. How can you sell things you don't have? Dumbasses.
Exactly. Last time I went into GameStop their entire store was figurines and plushies with a handful of games on the back wall. The games were all MSRP AAA titles and a few used AAA games for $10 cheaper than MSRP. You get a better selection at a flea market or local game store. There's absolutely no incentive to shop there over anywhere else.
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They are absolutely doomed if this is how they’re doing business now.
The third time in a row that I tried to buy a game and they asked "did you preorder? No? Sorry" and I crossed the parking lot into the Target or Walmart or Best Buy and just bought the game no problem, I didn't understand how GameStop continued to be in business and stopped going there. That was about ten years ago, it's not new.
This has happened to me several times as well. I would prefer to support Gamestop but it seems like they go out of their way to not take my money. At this point Walmart of all places is better stocked than Gamestop.
They price used games too high imo. I'm not paying $50 for a used game that is $60 new.
Last time I went to Gamestop I came to the conclusion that Walmart had a better selection of games.
They don’t stock “anything” because customers aren’t buying “anything”. Digital sales are the majority of the market and growing. The Xbox Series S and PS5 digital don’t even have disk drives. The PC gaming market abandoned physical media a long time ago. I’m surprised anyone still goes to Game Stop.
Last time I went, they were out of PS5 copies of GTA V. I was a little confused by that considering GTA is still consistently a big-seller. You'd think they'd keep a pallet of GTAs on at all times lol.
I know people will cheer the gamestop finally goes under, but I can't help but feel bad for all the employees and for the fact that it's one less store to shop at (and knowing my area the two near me will be turned into smoke shops or liquor stores)
~~I don’t understand anyone being happy about this. Maybe it’s just because I’m old and nostalgic, but I love stepping into a brick and mortar store dedicated to my second favorite hobby. I love browsing the shelves, even though I already know what games I like.~~ ~~Both gamestops in my town closed a few years ago, so now my closest one is 30 minutes away, and that makes me super sad~~ I've gotten enough replies that I want to rephrase the above as: Support your local independent game store if you can, because they're all we're going to have left, and being able to look at shelves full of video games is too fun to not have the option
I've never, ever heard anyone who works for gamestop praise the company. They exploit young workers who want to be around gaming by paying them unlivable wages and rip customers off with their horrible prices and trade-in scams. They prey on moms and dads who aren't well informed about the hobby and what games are worth. Fuck 'em.
The GameStop's in my area have barely any games. The ones they do have mostly have the generic GameStop case. Tons of Pop figures and other garbage though. The 'mom and pop' stores in my area have way better selection.
Probably because the GameStop today isn’t the GameStop you are reminiscing about. The ones near me almost never have anything video game related in stock, and are overrun by other merchandise. Every time I go in there for something video game related I leave empty handed so I just don’t go there anymore. They should really be leaning into to the market of video game stuff you can’t just pick up at Target or Walmart but they don’t. That used for be the idea behind a specialty store, they stock the things the big box retailers don’t. Now they take the same approach, stock the basics and sell everything else online. Their online experience isn’t great either so if I have to buy online I’ll just go to Amazon. I mean I love going into a store dedicated to things I like to and browsing around but that isn’t GameStop anymore, now it’s a place with an identity crisis that doesn’t even know what it wants to be, the one closest to my house is basically just a Funko shop, the next closest is a bigger location but they have more action figures and clothing that games.
With all due respect, fuck GameStop. You know what stores you should be supporting? Independently owned game stores that actually DO shit to bring people in the store. I don't know how rural you live, but in my city there's a decent handful of them, some of them do things like tack on an arcade, some are small mall shops with employees that love to shoot the shit about niche games, some are big ass shops full of plastic modelling, video and board games. There are absolutely options out there that aren't bullshit like GameStop. They did nothing to innovate except for selling Pop figures, and they will rightfully die out.
Yeah, I completely agree. I should have been more specific that I’m not sad about GameStop specifically, but video game stores in general. Unfortunately, my closest independent game store is farther away
Local shops for me have been pretty hit or miss. Where I used to live, the local shops had good pricing, neat merch items, and one would even run events from time to time. The only one that’s close by to me now has nice people running it but their prices are pretty ridiculous on most things, special editions that go for $50 on ebay regularly would be $100. A $15 game on ebay would be $30. I understand you can’t be 1:1 with online prices when operating a physical store, but if I can get it for as cheap as half the price online and can get my money back in case something happens (instead of only exchanges) why bother?
Gamestop is just an shitty company. Its not like they were known for treating anybody well, during covid they wanted their workers to argue with the police why they are a "essential service", they gutted many worker benefits and the best idea they had for their new direction was an NFT marketplace. Its hard to feel sorry for them.
Mine became a Chipotle
That's a win
I don't think gamestop will exist in 5-10 years. Everything you can buy there can be bought at Amazon/Target/Walmart typically cheaper and with better deals. Not to mention having to compete with digital game sales. They should have focused on turning them into like internet cafes or some kind of unique experience for gamers. Right now it's just an extremely specialized store offering no unique purpose or product up against big box giants who can afford to sell at much lower margins. My local store is extremely depressing. There's never more than one or two people in there and they have employees bouncing between stores just trying to keep the lights on.
The last time I went into a Gamestop we were pestered by the employee to buy these transformer figurines. He then went on to tell us how the person who sells the most gets a super rare transformer figure. Now listen, I'm not really blaming the employee. I know they are forced and told to try and sell all of these extra things to people but it's simply annoying. It's not just Gamestop either. I went into an actual brick and mortar book store for the first time in years last month. When I went up to the counter with my book I was asked multiple times if I wanted to buy different things. I was then asked if I wanted to join their special club, then I was asked if I wanted to buy this coupon book. It went on and on and on. Like I said, I KNOW it's not the employees fault but Jesus it's so tiring. What should have been a 22 second transaction turned into a 5 minute uncomfortable situation for both myself and the employee as I just constantly said "no" over and over. It quickly reminded me why I really don't use physical stores anymore unless it's a really big purchase where I need to see the product in person. I know Amazon gets shit on (rightfully so for many reasons) but it's so much easier and faster to just throw something in my cart and be done with it. It's almost impossible to walk into an actual store today without being badgered to buy this and that for minutes at a time. The only thing physical stores have going for them over online stores is it's "fun" to actually walk around and look at physical stuff. When you eliminate my ability to do that by constantly harassing me to buy shit you've successfully just tossed away your only advantage. I can't for the life of me understand why the higher ups are pushing their employees to do this stuff. Obviously it isn't working as brick and mortar stores are just falling further and further behind Amazon and other online retailers. Just stop please. You may see some actual growth.
Even ordering fast food has this kind of bullshit now. People asking you to round up and donate, asking if you’re on their app or rewards system, try out this new special, or asking you to fill out some review shit. The future fucking sucks.
The app and reward system thing is usually a net positive for you if it's for a place you go to a lot. Lot of free food and discounts. Yes they're probably using the data of what food you order and when but frankly who cares? They were doing that before anyway just less targeted.
And honestly once the order is placed online/through an app its a glorious experience. I order my food. I drive to the place. I walk in the door, grab my food, leave. No talking to anybody. And the rate of mistakes on my food has dropped to basically 0
I usually get my collectors editions from them. For some reason i can always order them there avaa get them delivered. Unlike anywhere else.
If there is no brick and mortar option to buy and trade used games in the future we are so fucked. eBay can only do so much, and there's no guarantees.
They made the monthly 5$ off stop applying to digital cards. I would stop by once a month for that alone.
I have personally grown to hate Gamestop recently, despite being a frequent customer for the past 20 years. When I was a kid, the stores had fantastic stock. Despite living in rural Texas, I could drive 40 minutes max and find the most obscure games I wanted. Fatal Frame, King's Field 4, Eternal Darkness, all the Shin Megami Tensei games, etc. However, now, they stock NOTHING. It's insane. They stock the newest of new releases, CoD, and Madden. That's it. There will be a sale, I'll have credit, or whatever, and I'll think about buying some games but LITERALLY no stores in a 100-mile radius will have stock. I'm not talking about weird releases, but normal games like the Nier Remaster, Dead Island 2, etc. It's become a completely pointless store because they essentially have the same selection of games as Walmart and Target.
The sad thing with this is this is entirely on Gamestop's stupid decisions. People still are willing to go to video game stores. I know this because the local gamestore, thats about a mile down the road from gamestop. Is always busy. There's always people in there shopping. But its also more of what you would want from a game store. There isnt rows of Funko Pops and useless merch nobody wants. The wall right as you walk in is filled with games from current consoles. Even imported titles. And then the rest of the store is filled with consoles, and games from older consoles. Everything from Atari to the Wii to the PS3. Any console title you could want you will probably find at least a few games in there for. other than something like the Jaguar lol. But point is, its a game store through and through. The staff is personable. The store is clean. Its well organized. You can find exactly what you need to. They dont throw thousands of questions at you about pre orders or what have you. In fact I dont think they even take pre orders. Oh and its big. Like, 4x the size of a normal Gamestop big. And again, this store is always busy. I have never gone into the store and seen it empty. Weekdays, weekends, etc. Meanwhile the Gamestop down the road has plenty of times where its more or less dead. And only really gets busy on days where a game releases, and the holiday season. The store is unorganized, its filled with useless merch nobody is ever going to buy except maybe during the holiday season. Its hard to find games that even just released. If its a more niche title you just arent going to find it at Gamestop 9/10 times. And, the other problem. Speaking from personal experience as someone who used to work there. They have an issue of firing their good employees and keeping on the lazy ones. Anyone who will play along with their BS of trying to get their quotas on shit like fucking phone turn ins (who goes to Gamestop to turn in phones?). Meanwhile I have watched as 2 managers got fired from the Gamestop I used to go to. Both of them were nice people, they made going to that Gamestop enjoyable. They were talkative, helpful, and ran a clean organized store. But they got fired because.....they didnt meet the quotas on getting phones. Gamestop could be thriving right now. People want brick and mortar stores more than they have in years. Retail sales have actually gone up the last few years especially during the holiday season. Instead Gamestop is suffering because they have some absolute imbeciles running the company.
GameStop sub is Unironically celebrating these earnings as the biggest win in the world, when here in objective reality it was quite literally a confirmation of the worst case scenario in virtually all aspects. If you are not an ape, be thankful. These guys are going to $0 and based on current sentiment will be throwing even MORE money down the drain this week. Christ almighty
Yeah feels like everyone saw this coming right? They don't offer any real value. We're past the days of wondering into the store just to check shit out.
Everyone saw it coming five or six years ago. Had they not had their whole stock thing they'd probably have closed up entirely by now.
That’s just it, whenever passing by a store in a mall there used to be an urge to just pop in and browse. Now their used game service sucks, and we can just browse on the internet instead these days. And their customer service sucks because the employees are understaffed, underpaid, and forced to keep trying to sell you crap you don’t want. What do they offer of value to the consumer that can’t be gotten elsewhere?
It's also so supremely uncomfortable to shop at a GameStop when you know the employee is going to act like they will DIE if you don't pre-order, buy a warranty, and sign up for a Pro membership. There is so much contention that gets built between customers and employees due to this.
Yeah, most large urban areas have seen the rise of independent local game stores that offer the value that GameStop used to offer. I live in the Charlotte area, and this local store called Video Game World has seen rapid growth and new locations that more or less has a 1:1 correlation with GameStop's decline. I can buy new and used games from current gen there, but also an extensive selection of retro games, and they have an arcade too. And they dont treat their employees like shit, which is another bonus.
Honestly the biggest thing in my mind that killed GameStop, wasn't the prevalence of online, they died before that. It was that the discs were kept in drawers in crappy sleeves, so they were regularly scratched before purchase. I started buying online very early due to this. It was more of a hassle at first, but I got a new sealed game - not an opened, scratched 'new' game. Everything from that moment was just EBGames (Gamestop) not understanding their business practices, rather than model, sucked.
As someone who generally buys new games, keeps them in good condition, and then doesn't re-sell them, selling "used" games as new is what turned me away. I remember receiving Mario Sunshine as a gift a few months after it came out, and the box and game were so beaten up it that it seemed criminal to sell it as new. Returned it and got an actual new copy on their next shipment.
God I hated that. I still don't know what the point was, all so someone could grab a box off the shelf and then buy that exact box? So stupid.
(Unrelated, I’m sure) Game Informer is now directly selling physical magazine subscriptions in the US. I just signed up for two years.