Not really, its just his video seems a bit over hyped and based on speculative hearsay
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
[Rumor] Former GameStop employee warning that GameStop is doing mass closures, urging people to cancel preorders
- Thread starter Deleted member 3812
- Start date
Not really, its just his video seems a bit over hyped and based on speculative hearsay
Same. Trading in my PRO for a 5 is the only thing GS is really good for in 2020.
I feel bad for the workers, but the company as a whole and me as a consumer... fuck em. If they dont want to try to compete with other B&M stores or amazon and other online stores they deserve to have the company emplode on itself. Seriously gamestop isnt the best place to ever buy games. Hell I'd say it's one of the worst and that's on the idea of even trying to get a good deal. Why preorder from them when I can preorder on amazon and not have to give my money immediately.
What if I want something limited that WILL sell out? Or, what if I want to pick it up in person and don't want it damaged by horrible packaging that Amazon etc provides?
I mean, despite people always discouraging people NOT to pre-order, there are always good reasons... I don't even care about the corporation, I just wanna make sure I get my stuff not broken :/
I'd be inclined to disagree here. This past BF I was able to get Spider Man (not the GoTY version), God of War, and The Division 2, all used for $27.88+ tax with a B2G1 free promo and my Power Up Rewards card. I also had the games the same day. If I tried that with Amazon I'd need a Prime membership, and even if i had one the chances of getting a deal like that are quite low. Also notice that Gamestop was one of the only stores offering deals for more niche titles like Ai: The Somnium Files and Steins;Gate Elite. Look through this spreadsheet (it's the CAG BF 2019 sheet) and notice just how many times Gamestop has the best deal (in green) on a title.
If you buy older or used titles (not even past gen stuff - think stuff like Fallout 4 or CoD Infinite Warfare), you can do well with buying from Gamestop when they have one of their relatively frequent deals - either the buy X get X free, or the 4 for $10 / $20 type deals. Don't forget too that Amazon got rid of the 20% off preorders option they used to have. Not that Gamestop has one, but it was a feather in Amazon's cap and a reason to buy from there. Oh, and Gamestop do also do pretty good trade in deals for systems, which helps if you want to upgrade to a new system by trading in your current one.
Last edited:
It's generally the result of Gamestop's market strangulation strategy, and then a couple stores happen to hit whatever arbitrary minimum they declare to retain stores as they go through systematic closures.
Pity as I don't shop at that location anymore...GS must have some sort of contract with Capcom
They probably do. The Monster Hunter World LE was only on gamestop.com as well. They also had some sort of timed deal with Square, too. Square used to ONLY sell their LEs as Square Enix Store exclusives, and then shortly after release I saw stuff like Dissidia and Dragon Quest Warriors LEs make their way into Gamestops.
Keep a close eye on this, I don't have anything preordered, just have $300 for my PS5 on GameStop credit. As long as that's safe I'm ok...Just need to stick around for another year
the new ceo has already presided over a round closings and suggested there would be more. Sales are down across the industry and presumably hitting physical even harder. they might not go out of business in the next couple months but It is inevitable at this point.
This guy has a major hate boner for Gamestop and often gets things incorrect (such as not getting your preordered money back? It gets sent to another store. Not to corporate - what the fuck would they use a gift card for in an office in Grapevine?) so while he gets some things correct just by virtue of disgruntled employees feeding him email chains I'd take what he says with a grain a salt. A broken clock is still right twice a day.
GameStop Reports Third Quarter Fiscal 2019 Results and Updates Fiscal 2019 Guidance
OP
OP
A lot of decreases in sales reported:
I used to have six Gamestops within a half-hour or so of where I live. Now there's like, two.
My guess is that they're banking on next gen console wave/ holiday season to give them that surge in business to at least hold out for as long as possible after then....if they can survive that long that is.
This is my guess. But it still doesn't solve the underlying problem. A large portion of their customer base has gone digital for software, and they can't make up for that on hardware sales alone. And filling the stores with keychains and Funko shit hasn't made up the difference, either.
That's a good point. I've definitely gotten the impression that it's a matter of when more than if at this point.
Just to the board and majority shareholders. They wouldn't have to tell the shareholders if it could cause a mass panic/sell off that would render them unable to conduct the closures properly. Right now it'd be all about those people protecting their money and not really worrying about the people that own 1% of the company.
This dude's content should be banned from Era. He's a disgruntled former employee who has done nothing but spread BS since they let him go. More than half of the shit he says is made up. What he's claiming in this video isn't even company policy on how store closures work -- as many have already pointed out. The reason he continues to post content like this is because it's the only way his channel gets views. Look at the rest of his content that isn't making up claims about his former employer and it's all irrelevant view counts. Dude needs to grow up and move on.
I mean, wasn't there a game that was cancelled just a few years back precisely because Preorder numbers were too low?
...Well on the other hand in that case I'm pretty sure it was from a C-Tier studio that specialized in Ecchi stuff with extremely short sales-legs in which case Preorders probably made up >90% of their sales volume.
Nah I will continue to preorder. Doesn't cost me anything from Amazon.
You like who freaking cares if people pre order or trade in games? I still have PTSD from someone getting into my EBay/PayPal account years ago I'm not comfortable selling stuff myself.
I don't agree he's been more right than wrong. I think your completely overreacting to him.
Well, shit. I want to preorder the RE3 CE, but I know that my local store is pretty low volume and probably at high risk of closure. I don't have the time to get to any of the busier locations near me in the next day or two.
You know, you're right. My bad, I had mistaken it with something else. I DID get mine from in store as well. RE7 for sure was online-only though.
EDIT: Just saw a Tweet saying it's available for in-store pre-order right now (just not online yet).
Last month Gamestop Denmark announced they were closing all of their stores by the end of the year.
True story : as a kid I lost 50$ for my Ocarina of Time pre-order because Adventure Electronics went out of business.
You're wrong, he's not spreading bs and if you watched his videos, you would understand why he hates GameStop now, they fucked him over and also took advantage of other employees. He gets credible info from employees who message him and shares the disgusting shit this company pulls on its employees. He also shares things people have message him about Amazon and other corporations. And it all lines up with the stuff everyone has heard.
Don't be a corporate boot licker for GameStop of all companies, they're problematic as hell.
If you can back up your claims he's made stuff up with specifics, please do, but like many other people have said, he's been right more than wrong and has leaked all these plans before they've been made public.
So how does this effect EBGames in Canada?
I get wanting to avoid pre-orders, but all the people who shout "fuck pre-orders" ignore the fact that with the right promotions you can recycle games into actually making money in the end. Last week I traded in 4 switch games and got $280 dollars, which in Canada is insane.
I get wanting to avoid pre-orders, but all the people who shout "fuck pre-orders" ignore the fact that with the right promotions you can recycle games into actually making money in the end. Last week I traded in 4 switch games and got $280 dollars, which in Canada is insane.
This reads like someone who has no idea how business scaling works in brick and mortar stores vs. online stores. Amazon and online stores can afford to be competitive because the way an online business works is completely different from brick and mortar stores. The real issue is that Gamestop is really only a video game store, in a business landscape where most businesses are being competitive by offering more than one thing (before anyone brings up collectables, it has no synergy with video games. Look at the people who only come to GS for Funkos. Oftentimes, they aren't buying games). And GameStop's competition is willing to treat games as a loss leader because they have other components with better margins + Nintendo/Sony/MS offering their own digital storefronts, which cuts into game sales.
Add in the customer service issues, and it's no wonder that they are struggling. This isn't really a situation that they can come back from. "Adapt or die" nonsense needs to end.
They don't charge until it ships. That's what it says on the site. 😦
Since I have no other choice, I decided to take a chance and preorder it at my local store. I really hope they don't get shuttered.
This dude doesn't announce or leak anything too new. Many of the corporate changes and decisions he makes videos about are announced well before via the employee portal or are just well-known secrets among employees if you know the right people. He clearly has friends still with the company that give him info then he fills it with clickbait, misinformation about how the company worked when he worked there years ago, and general bullshit.
GameStop is circling the toilet and has been for years. They announced all of their recent closures and layoffs in a reasonable amount of time, and while I don't think things are as bad as this video makes it out to be (based on my time with the company, my friends that are still there, and general sense), but the company does not have more than a few years left in it. Camelot has just found a way to profit off of that, fearmonger, and put store level employees in a bad spot.
GameStop is circling the toilet and has been for years. They announced all of their recent closures and layoffs in a reasonable amount of time, and while I don't think things are as bad as this video makes it out to be (based on my time with the company, my friends that are still there, and general sense), but the company does not have more than a few years left in it. Camelot has just found a way to profit off of that, fearmonger, and put store level employees in a bad spot.
I'm sure they'll be around for the next gen launch in some capacity. Those are always profitable times for retail stores. In the UK GAME was recently bought out by an infamous businessman who has repeatedly bought high street chains on the verge of collapse for a bargain, milked them for whatever he can, and then moved on. GAME has been circling the drain here for a decade now, couldn't have made it to late 2020 alone, but there's always some dodgy businessman waiting to pounce. Next gen hardware launch isn't an opportunity to be missed, even in the worst case scenario like the UK has. It's from 2021 onwards that we might start seeing complete collapse with no bidders.
What? He has contacts within corporate for Gamestop that collaborate what's he's saying. From other store managers and people who worked in the warehouse. He even said he helped closed other Gamestop stores.
From the latest Quarterly earnings, doesn't look like they be around much longer with declining sales all across the board.
Just to follow-up. The earnings were indeed terrible but not totally unexpected. In regards to this fellows video, will gamestop close more stores? Probably however, we knew that long before his video. The most important evidence is GameStop buying 1/3 of the outstanding stock that's out there. Basically they are betting on themselves that in the long term they will rise from this end of lifecycle slump and be profitable again. I don't buy the "mass" closings part and without hard numbers it's hard to make a fair assessment. One thing I believe most people can agree on is at least in the US, there are far too many gamestops to nourish the current market.
Final note: GameStop is still selling about 5 Billion dollars worth of Games and merch a year and even with digital cutting into a fair share of that, "if" managed correctly, I suspect they can navigate the end of this gen and be in a solid position at the start of next gen.