They should call it FunkoStop with all %#)$ bobbleheads they sell now.
Not even a pile of gaming garbage could turn the ship around, because GameStop is in talks with buyout firms.
The retailer’s stock has slid more than 32 percent over the last 12 months, bringing its market capitalization to $1.42 billion, down from about $9.4 billion in 2007.
Ouchy. It was inevitable and highly entertaining to watch. Some of us thought it would’ve happened long ago with downloadable games and DLC and horse armor creeping in. Sit right back and you’ll hear a decade-long tale, courtesy mostly of posters who have long since logged off and disappeared forever, but a few that are still around. Perhaps more than a few still bitter about a decade’s worth of horrible store policies, employees that rubbed them the wrong way (sometimes through incompetence, sometimes idiotic corporate strategizing, or just plain immaturity), worthless trade-ins, predatory salesmanship. If you wanted to start a gaming store chain, you couldn’t create something this bad if you tried; the story of Gamestop is a series of mismanagement that piggybacks on its own mistakes and rides them through the mud like a rodeo clown.
GameStop closing 150 stores.
That was only a year ago.
Perhaps takeovers and underhanded ways to buy out the competition is finally catching up karma-wise to GameStop!
Ask and you shall receive! What a long strange trip it's been. Here, one of the great opening lines to a longstanding thread "
So nobody likes GameStop?" which references waay back to the Gamecube era, started March 21, 2009, the day after the opening of spring that year, but far from the beginning of the spring of the forum's discontent:
I was reading some of the negative comments about GameStop in the NWR 2006 thread...
One of the great things about the forums is learning about all the flyover, unwashed states from sea to shining sea, the yearning overweight masses huddled uncomfortably close together in a grimy sea of humanity:
The GameStops here in Anchorage are teh_evil, claiming to hold items for you and then, once you get there, deny memory of holding anything for you (like an hour ago--screw you guys) and hey--they're all out of (whatever they were supposed to be holding). It has happened to me many times.
More irritating are the times where they try to sell you a used game in a generic DVD case for full price, or when they give you crap for credit on fairly new games. I don't like the type of employee who thinks he's better than you, which I've encountered many times.
What turned me away from GameStop for good was the time I had to go in and renew my GameInformer subscription. I stood in like for like fifteen minutes behind some idiot fat guy who kept asking about release dates and whether they had this game or that.
I noticed that the whole store was crawling with people who looked homeless or, at the very least, hadn't showered in weeks. When I finally got up to the counter and asked to renew my GI subscription, they asked if I wanted to reserve any games. The person behind me belched loudly and chuckled with his idiot friend.
I renewed my subscription and haven't been back since.
We also got to see how our lovely forumers interact with people who are paid to do the same thing we do on the forums, only with the added wrinkle of the slow realization that not every employee in the ENTIRE country is as bad as the ones in my neighborhood:
GameStop is overpriced. Gamestop employees are rude and stupid. Gamestop only stays afloat because of a lack of competition. I've been to several different stores in several different states and the story is always the same.
One thing that always bothers me about Gamestop hate is that they pick on the employees, labeling them all as incompetent fanboys simply because of a couple of them in ONE store.
Many of my friends are Gamestop employees. S_B's girlfriend is a Gamestop manager. And I've met and talked with many wonderful Gamestop employees, so to me whenever someone bashes the employees I get upset.
Yes, like ANY store in the world, there are some really bad employees, ones that will test your patience. But simply because you encountered one bad employee you shouldn't convince yourself that all of them are bad. Many are just like you and me; hard working people trying to make a living. And they also get bullcrap from the store and its clients.
Hell, I've even encountered pregnant employees, handling multiple reservations when they should be resting! So because of that I've gained empathy towards employees because they are humans.
If you want to hate the store, hate on its policies, ideas and deals, but leave the employees out of it because they have it just as bad, if not worse, as we.
Regarding Gamestop hate, I think gamers hate it for the same reason many hate Wal-Mart: Its one of the biggest game stores in the US right and its contemporary. Since they have kind of a monopoly on the selling and trading of used games they get away with some dubious things, and that's why so many gamers say nothing but horror stories about them.
Now, if there were more Gamestop like stores and there was real competition then maybe the hate would ease up. Maybe.
Finally, it seems the hate comes from problems with ONE store. I've been to multiple Gamestops, and the service DOES vary. There are stores which are organized and the employees are nice and friendly. Then there are stores that are a mess and its employees are rude.
So it seems that if they have experiences with one store they label them all like that.
The thread even contained an UNSOLVED MYSTERY:
Wait, GP shops at the Gamestop where Dirk shops? How do they both know the same Amanda clerk?
Furthermore, GP is in Washington. Dirk is in New Hampshire. Pap is in Puerto Rico. Smash Bros is in Alaska. Athena is in King of Fighters. HOW DO YOU ALL SHOP FACE TO FACE AT THE SAME GAMESTOP?
I’ll give em this: they did try responding to market changes. They've given good preorder bonuses over the years. I’ve bought a few gaming knickknacks from them. Now I go in there and I want to throw up. In any case, this change happened right around 9 years ago. I think that's right around the time Nintendo also announced they'd start selling games in non-game stores. Which was exciting at first, but then it just meant that you could buy those retarded beach minigames for Wii at the grocery store.
Gamestop now offering over priced and somewhat ugly gaming clothing
« on: February 03, 2009, 03:37:12 PM »STOP GIVING GAMESTOP YOUR MONEY! (GameStop Vs Amazon)[size=0px]« on: March 08, 2011, 05:35:39 PM »[/size] GameStop humbly offers me $16.00 for Epic Mickey..... Original Value? $49.99 + $2.50 State Tax= $52.49
Kingdom hearts Re:coded.... Much more recent, hasn't really aged much, and including Tax and all that stuff, I originally payed $36.74
Now what does Lovely GameStop want to give me for this fairly pricey DS game?
12.00.....
GameStop to Challenge Steam, OnLive and Maybe One Day Apple
« on: April 02, 2011, 10:14:57 AM »
Well, it looks like GameStop's plans following its acquisition of Impulse and Spawn Labs may be even grander than we had suspected. At an investor conference today, GameStop said flat out that it is "becoming a technology company," and that it does indeed plan to introduce a cloud-based gaming service similar to OnLive as a result of the Spawn Labs acquisition, while Impulse will be used to "compete fiercely" with Steam.
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But that's just the start of things. According to the Dallas Morning News, GameStop also plans to expand the gaming service to a variety of mobile devices, and it's apparently even entertaining the idea of a GameStop-branded tablet, saying that "if we feel like we could do a better job of making a tablet, we'll do that." Of course, some of that is still quite a ways off, but GameStop will be taking its first steps fairly soon -- it's already showed off a demo of how the service will be integrated into its website (see above, complete with a "try it now" option), and it plans to begin a public beta sometime this year before rolling out the full service early next year.
I don't remember this in the slightest, or what came from this, and it seems as if, once the history of our era is written, no one else will either.
Farewell Gamestop, I hope your fine organization gets a fantastic trade-in value.