GameStop’s Desperation Really Shined This Week
It’s not a secret nor a surprise to see that GameStop is in a burdensome predicament, one they were bound to find themselves in thanks to changing market conditions. Attempts from publishers to goad the gaming audience into purchasing digital titles over physical ones are only getting more successful over time. There’s also a whole generation that was raised on buying digital games off the App Store and Google Play, who find the mere thought of going to a store to purchase physical media a foreign concept. These reasons are why the stores have shifted to partially focusing on Funko Pop figures and phone and tablet trade-ins, but that was only going to be a temporary anodyne.
You might think a company in this position would be on top of their game at nearly all times, to do their best to survive in a market that’s slowly shutting them out. If you considered that for a second, you do not know GameStop.
In the midst of changes in the way they have to do business with the rising threat of COVID-19 in the United States, the company’s corporate arm has provided baffling suggestions to their employees on how to do business. One in particular spectacularly exploded in their faces.
Employees took to Reddit early in the week to voice concerns about how unprepared the corporate arm was to operate their retail business as COVID-19 continued to spread. They claimed they’d provide stores with sufficient cleaning equipment in order to make the environment safe for shoppers, but some of them received nothing. Those stores were told to fend for themselves by purchasing their own cleaning equipment, including hand sanitizer and disinfectant liquids and wipes, both of which were in short supply at stores across the US thanks to people buying them in droves. The employee and consumer nightmare scenario involved infected kids (knowingly or not) putting their hands on a bunch of display boxes in stores, and the inability to keep track of them all and clean them.
The employees were also nervous about the launch events for the recent releases of Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, both of which officially released on Friday. COVID-19 can also spread through the air, the reason why health experts recommend that people stand within six feet from each other. This would not be possible with long lines full of people who desperately wanted to pick up copies of both games. This was thankfully mitigated with the cancellation of the launch events, and moving Eternal’s release date to Thursday in GameStop stores.
For as bad as the overall unpreparedness explained above was, this was nothing compared to the massively embarrassing plan they concocted later this week. Stores considered non-essential are being closed nationwide in the US for coronavirus concerns, and no one in their right mind would have argued that a video game and Funko Pop shop was “essential.” GameStop, it turns out, is not in their right mind, and wanted employees to claim that it was essential.
Let me be clearer here: They flat-out wanted employees to argue to authorities that the stores had to stay open when they would inevitably come to close them down for defying state and city government orders. And they didn’t even provide good reasons for why it’s essential. This would have put employees in finicky positions at best and dangerous positions at worst, all because the company didn’t want to lose any sales in a time when they need them. The backlash to this came swiftly not only from the social media world and the enthusiast gaming press, but even mainstream press outlets like Entertainment Weekly and CNN.
The pushback was bad enough that they had no choice but to walk this back. They’ve since confirmed that they’re closing their stores in California, to comply with the order from state Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to fully lock down the state. There was no comment regarding whether this will apply to other states also locking down non-essential businesses, but it likely will. Update: Though this didn’t stop Pennsylvania state officials from revoking GameStop’s business license. I’d like to think they won’t be willing to stomach another PR disaster of this magnitude, but it was a surprise, even for GameStop, that they dug themselves into this mess in the first place. In other stores, they’ve suspended trade-ins until March 29th; this crisis is unlikely to be over by then, so expect that date to be adjusted.
What I would have given to have been a fly on the wall, to hear the thoughts of the execs who thought these were smart ideas. But I might be overestimating them; chances are they didn’t give this any thought. GameStop’s execs are among those who think they can do no wrong and make no critical mistakes because they have money, and that it’s not possible to make piles of money if you’re not smart. But it’s partly because of critical and baffling mistakes like these that GameStop, like other retailers, will have a tough time from here on — beyond stores losing sales because of the necessary lockdowns. Their recent moves have only made things worse.
Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has his work cut out for him when he joins GameStop’s Board of Directors on April 20th. Well, assuming he hasn’t joined them so he can get one of those sweet, sweet golden parachutes.
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
