GameStop Stock Worth $5.13...But Only Worth 7cents In Store Credit

Tarrant

Tarrant

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Qhue said:
www.polygon.com

GameStop employees report extreme pressure from ‘desperate’ bosses

In multiple interviews with Polygon, store managers and staff speak of plummeting morale
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com

They continue to circle the drain it sounds like. I stopped going to Gamestop a decade ago when they became a full-fledged pawn shop and haven't regretted it seince. I am annoyed, however, that they ruined the ThinkGeek brand as that was always such a fun place for cool geeky gifts and is now just a shadow of its former self.

They should never have gotten into the 'used games' market. Once they started down that pawnshop path it sent the place spiraling into the gutter. Just think what would have happened if they had pivoted away from computer games and into pen and paper and board games at the start of the current boardgame renaissance? Picture a huge marketing campaign and midnight release parties for Gloomhaven or Scythe expansions or something of that ilk. Instead we have Target, of all places, serving as the vessel for mass market gaming in 2020.
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Board gaming is great but its not enough to support a company on the scale of Gamestop, otherwise great stores like Games by James would be a lot larger than they are.

I mean Gamestop did itself no favors with a lot of their tactics but used gamin was absolutely the model to go into and kept them around a lot longer than they would have been otherwise. While their trade in policies have been not always fair, used games are a great thing and is no where near a "pawnshop" as you put it. If not for used gaming, Gamestop woulda been dead a long time ago as would any other video game store that sold strictly new.

Brick and mortar in general is struggling to stay alive and in an age where digital has largely taken over most forms of media, its hard for Gamestop to stay relevant. Ugh, man screw you for making me defend Gamestop. :p

And if you wanna buy board games and dont have stores like the before mentioned Games By James near you, then hit up Barnes and Noble. Their selection is usually pretty great. Honestly, the best place to buy board games these days is Kickstarter.
 
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Utnayan

Utnayan

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Gamestop should buy Gamefly.

Best place to buy board games, hell just go to Amazon.
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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Tarrant said:
I thought you liked Gamefly lol
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Haha :)

From a business perspective and market I see the following:

1) Internet caps (Which do not seem to be changing) and an ever increasing stream/download pool (And downloads are getting a lot larger) are going to force people back to physical unless that changes.

2) System manufacturers will continue to drive digital, that's a given, but the infrastructure and policies of ISP's will hamper that. (And aside from input latency, this is why cloud gaming will never take off.. Bandwidth caps and throttling)

3) Physical will therefore still need to be placated for the forseeable future.

4) Rental services for physical will increase.

Obviously that goes out the window if someone in government says, "No. You cannot monetize bandwidth caps and throttle" - of which they will just increase their prices to compensate but people still will not need to worry about caps - hence, digital it becomes.

Now aside from digital games, audio/video freaks like myself will still be wanting physical movies for pure lossless uncompressed dolby atmos tracks. Problem is people need to start renting 4k movies, even Gamefly still doesn't do this.

Rental markets are going to see an uptick in my opinion due to ISP companies and their clamp down on bandwidth, in which 1tb didn't seem like a hurdle 2 years ago, but I guarantee you those ISP's new this was coming, and they are going to try and capitalize on it. This will have a market shift in my opinion due to costs.

So, while used games go down the toilet because of digital sales, downloading 4 games a month will chew up 60% of a user's bandwidth cap, and streaming easily will surprass that in 4k from whatever service is being used, and the first thing people will thing of is buying physical games to save on their caps. Hence, rental market. And then if anything, just keep them 3 months down the road for half the price (or same price as a digital sale) and be done with it.
 
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Fight

Fight

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Gamestop could have shifted its business model, but they chose to keep taking the easy money at the expense of their customers. 2013 the signs were clear. Music & DVD's were already shot in the head dead and video games were next. Gamestop did nothing.

They turned all the publishers in the industry against them. They raped little Timmy and his stupid mom. Their employees despised their own company.

$4.22 and plummeting. Just die already.
 
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Nola

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Tarrant said:
That wasn’t my experience. EB was one of the best companies I ever worked for. Our yearly conventions in Vegas (all management went) and free trips to E3 alone were something to look forward to every year.

I wasn’t there 3 years but the DM before me was there for 5 before her promotion.
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I used to work at EB games and my good friend who was the store manager use to always go to Vegas and come back with free shit to give it to us. I use to like how employees being able to rent games and always be the first ones to get them days before release. EB Games was a good company until Gamestop took them over. I never worked under Gamestop but the ones I knew who worked there hated it.
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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Nola said:
I used to work at EB games and my good friend who was the store manager use to always go to Vegas and come back with free shit to give it to us. I use to like how employees being able to rent games and always be the first ones to get them days before release. EB Games was a good company until Gamestop took them over. I never worked under Gamestop but the ones I knew who worked there hated it.
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I worked for Software Etc as a kid - the check out program was hilarious. We had a shrink wrap machine in the back room and would just check out 1 title on the shelf, copy it (on PC) and just reshrink and sell it as new. I even was able to check out video game systems.
 
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Nola

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Utnayan said:
I worked for Software Etc as a kid - the check out program was hilarious. We had a shrink wrap machine in the back room and would just check out 1 title on the shelf, copy it (on PC) and just reshrink and sell it as new. I even was able to check out video game systems.
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Yup we shrink-wrapped so many games after copying them it was ridiculous. lol That was probably the best perk working at EB Games.
 
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Utnayan

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And then we would get upset when someone came in to buy Peachtree for $299, we knew they copied it and would return it the next day :p
 
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Tarrant

Tarrant

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By the time I was working at EB we didn't shrink wrap anything (except used systems sometimes). So I never had to worry about being in a rush to copy anything. lol
 
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Noodleface

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I just buy games on Amazon.. or walmart. At walmart they don't give a fuck what you buy, there's no store card, the only pressure they ask is if you want a protection plan but even then they don't give a fuck. They don't get anything from that.

As kids we abused the EB Games return policy. It was something like if you didn't like it within 10 days you could return it for store credit. Well... 13 year old kids can beat a lot of games pretty quick. But they just kept letting us turn them in.
 
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Utnayan

Utnayan

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I still do BB but I still have GC until April of this year (Finally expires that sucks) so I'll probably still buy there though when I do for rewards.
 
Tarrant

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Yeah my GC expires then too. So sad, one of the best reward programs ever made, really.
 
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Kirun

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Haha :)

From a business perspective and market I see the following:

1) Internet caps (Which do not seem to be changing) and an ever increasing stream/download pool (And downloads are getting a lot larger) are going to force people back to physical unless that changes.

2) System manufacturers will continue to drive digital, that's a given, but the infrastructure and policies of ISP's will hamper that. (And aside from input latency, this is why cloud gaming will never take off.. Bandwidth caps and throttling)

3) Physical will therefore still need to be placated for the forseeable future.

4) Rental services for physical will increase.

Obviously that goes out the window if someone in government says, "No. You cannot monetize bandwidth caps and throttle" - of which they will just increase their prices to compensate but people still will not need to worry about caps - hence, digital it becomes.

Now aside from digital games, audio/video freaks like myself will still be wanting physical movies for pure lossless uncompressed dolby atmos tracks. Problem is people need to start renting 4k movies, even Gamefly still doesn't do this.

Rental markets are going to see an uptick in my opinion due to ISP companies and their clamp down on bandwidth, in which 1tb didn't seem like a hurdle 2 years ago, but I guarantee you those ISP's new this was coming, and they are going to try and capitalize on it. This will have a market shift in my opinion due to costs.

So, while used games go down the toilet because of digital sales, downloading 4 games a month will chew up 60% of a user's bandwidth cap, and streaming easily will surprass that in 4k from whatever service is being used, and the first thing people will thing of is buying physical games to save on their caps. Hence, rental market. And then if anything, just keep them 3 months down the road for half the price (or same price as a digital sale) and be done with it.
Click to expand...

Data caps are going to go the way of the dodo. Streaming services are here to stay and only swallowing more and more of the physical market. Competition is way too intense for companies like Comcast to continue throttling/caps/etc. Sure, they still employ it because they are only worried about short-term profits and squeezing what blood they can get from the turnip now, but even in my podunk town there are three different providers and none of them have data caps. Just 8 years ago the number of providers in this area was one.

Then you also have cell-phone companies, which are extremely competitive. So, if cable companies don't get off of their asses and stop trying to fuck consumers, people will start swapping over to tethering as an alternative. After that, you have Papa Musk who likely isn't far off from being able to deliver hi-speed, wireless internet to large portions of the country who have 0-1 options.

Physical media is dead. Just like disco, VHS, DVDs, Blu-Ray, etc. Sure, you'll get your fucking physical hipsters (hi2u vinyl) and geezers who think physical is like...so much better maaaaan! But, that small segment of the population isn't enough to keep giant, physical media companies like Gamestop around. They're barely enough to keep your local record store and "retro" video-game store afloat. Because while they may think that physical is the bees-knees, guess how they most often choose to purchase that piece of physical media? Yup...digitally.

Digital is here to stay.
 
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Ritley

Ritley

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I still buy physical over digital probably 90% of the time. Only time I ever really do digital is for older games where the digital sales drop below $20. Otherwise physical is usually cheaper with the added bonus of being able to share games with friends/family. I will admit to occasionally making a boredom digital purchase though (DMC5 most recently).

I do agree that data caps aren’t a long term concern though.
 
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Malakriss

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If Comcast was made to drop data caps then all of the smaller shitty companies would have to follow suit. Verizon never had one since i picked them up in 2008, they're more than happy to take your money and not be dicks about it.
 
Ritley

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Charter doesn’t have caps (at least the shit offered by spectrum doesn’t in my area), and ATT doesn’t at least for their top package which is currently gigabit. I know CenturyLink doesn’t either.
 
Falstaff

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Huh? I have 50 mb standard internet with ATT and I have a data cap. So most people with ATT probably have one.
 
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Utnayan

Utnayan

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Century link in my area does unless you get fiber. Charter cannot enter my area. So it's either Comcast or Century Link.

Also When the FCC approved the merger of Charter, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House into the single brand of Spectrum, it ruled that the new provider couldn't charge overages or impose data caps for at least seven years. that's the only reason why there are no caps. Doesn't mean its going the way of the Do Do.
 
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