GameStop Is Reacting to Peril With Desperation
It’s been clear for a while that GameStop would eventually run into trouble. Video game software sales have been slowly but surely making the transition from physical to digital over the last decade, which alone spelled trouble for a retailer with revenue depending on the sales of physical games. The digital codes they offer for games and store credit don’t make up for those. Digital adoption is only increasing, especially with Microsoft feeling comfortable enough to offer a hardware option that doesn’t have a disc drive.
In fairness, it’s not like they haven’t been considering where they could be in the digital era. GameStop has increased their focus on selling Funko Pop! figures to memetic degrees, and iPhone sales and trade-ins. They help, but they’re unlikely to save them. Sales from the Christmas 2019 season were down 27.5% compared to 2018, “well below expectations,” as they claimed. Their stock has been downgraded so low that it’s equivalent to “junk.” Closing thousands of stores over the last several years and cutting jobs at Game Informer hasn’t been enough for them either. Now, they’re getting desperate to stay open, with the employees, and consumers who visit the stores to a lesser extent, being forced to suffer.
Polygon spoke to several employees and managers for a longform story about GameStop’s current predicament, all of which are rightfully concerned about the company’s future existence. They’re encouraging employees to get pushier with offers for consumers, which those same employees logically believe will push more people away. The piece highlights how corporate types are simultaneously referred to as the smartest and dumbest people around.
For one, the company is intensifying their efforts to have employees request trades for and selling used hardware, including phones. “Our district manager is pushing tech trades, like iPhones and tablets, as well as [pre-order] reservations. No one cares about the games, or the customers, anymore. It’s obnoxious,” an assistant manager who wished to remain anonymous told Polygon. This is being enforced so heavily that employees have sheets district managers have to fill out, to show how they’ve asked consumers about what kind of phone they use and explain their reselling offers. This even sounds annoying when written, and it’s assuredly infuriating to detail with in person — especially if you have to hear it too many times upon visiting stores. I’ll be surprised if anyone in the corporate arm thought about this for more than five seconds.
Even worse is how employees are reportedly required to collect information about ten consumers every week, to pitch them various services. It’s a skeevy invasion of privacy. To no surprise, several employees and managers have quit out of stress and because of how arduous it is to continually engage in these practices. The turnover rate at GameStop tends to be pretty high, but district managers don’t fret it because of how many people submit resumes, and the little training that’s required. Another assistant manager told Polygon that GameStop attempted to let employees dial back the pushy practices last year, but reversed course after only a month. Needless to say, the work environments at GameStop stores doesn’t sound healthy.
Traffic to GameStop stores has also dropped. One issue is that kids don’t visit stores to purchase or trade in games at the rate they used to, because the current generation is being raised on buying digital goods. They’ve downloaded games to their phones and tablets for their entire lives, and are doing the same with console and handheld purchases. As the article mentions, many of them love Fortnite, a massive free-to-play game with all-digital in-game purchases. Store employees noticed that holiday season business last year was noticeably down from the previous year, something reflected in the aforementioned financial numbers. The aforementioned pushy tactics employees have to use won’t help this.
By the way: The anecdote about kids being raised on buying digitally should make anyone from a generation that remembers game cartridges fondly feel like they should be using a cane to get around. Yeesh.
GameStop has always forced their employees to be the equivalent of hucksters. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t walk into a GameStop and get asked to preorder a bunch of games and take advantage of their services, especially when I purchased a game. But in this case, the employees shouldn’t be blamed for this, as tough as that is. They’re being put up to this by an increasingly desperate corporate arm that, as the piece mentions, isn’t doing this to save the company, but to stave off its closure so the higher-ups can safely secure their golden parachutes. To say that corporate culture and unfettered capitalism have flaws would be one of the biggest understatements in history.
GameStop’s predicament is only getting more dire; so dire, in fact, that you shouldn’t preorder anything too far out. GameStop chief executive George Sherman tried to assuage shareholders by saying the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X next-gen consoles and accompanying software could help their fortunes, but that’s unlikely to be enough. GameStop stores won’t be the only ones selling them, and several console owners will purchase software digitally. Try as they will, to downright pitiful degrees in a few cases, there’s no reversing course for GameStop. Keep the regular employees and remaining writers at Game Informer in your thoughts, because the worst is yet to come for several of them.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
