GameStop’s fiscal difficulties have only increased each quarter, and unfortunately, things aren’t looking any brighter, say GameStop employees.
In an in-depth report by Collin Campbell of Polygon, current and past GameStop employees were interviewed anonymously about their experience working at a company that is desperately attempting to stay afloat amongst online retailers such as Amazon or digital game sales on consoles.
Campbell’s report summarizes as follows: Customers are less interested in buying physical games, leaving brick-and-mortar stores such as GameStop suffering in terms of stock, profit margins, and store atmosphere.
The profits-first-customer-last based model has made for a less personal, more uncomfortable shopping experience for those both in front and behind the counter. “I’ve seen a change in the sheer desperation the company has towards its profit margins,” says one store manager. “The company is frantic and distrustful,” states an assistant manager. “You can feel it in every message they send. The structure is falling apart and they’re scrambling.”
And the scramble will only get worse. A former store manager had the following grim foretelling: “I think they’ll close a thousand stores this year.” For a chain once known for being the top place to sell, trade and buy pre-owned games, that premonition could spell doom for the secondhand game store.
A former company executive puts it plainly: “Ten years ago, younger demographics came in to trade used games. But they’ve grown up now and are buying online. Unfortunately, the new generation behaves differently. They grew up on iPads, touching a screen to download content. They aren’t interested in going to a store to buy a used game.”
On the front lines, a manager recalls his grievances of now being the only employee in the store on any given shift. “Between dealing with guests and doing the absolutely mandatory stuff [corporate] demands, there’s no time. This accumulates in feeling overworked, underpaid, and a store that looks like you have given up and don’t care.”
I personally attempt to keep my local GameStop alive, despite my bordering-on-less-than-lukewarm opinion of their business models. I’ve taken advantage of some of their sweet console trade-in deals, and I have plenty of recent fond memories of picking up a midnight release game there. It’s part of my culture and tribe to be in a GameStop, but that facet of being a gamer is being snuffed out by the internet retailer.
I do feel some pressure in their stores to buy, sell, trade, preorder, subscribe; but mostly I feel, well, depressed. Soon, brick-and-mortar video game stores will be a thing of the past.
No matter how many times GameStop redesigns and reworks their retail locations to include things like retro games or Funko Pops, the writing is on the wall: GameStop, much like the sort-of defunct Toy-R-Us, will soon be a mental relic from the golden age of video game retail.
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