Is Gamestop Evil? The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[CAv]

Gamestop moves in, kills the small stores, then phases out all retro games. Now they're pushing exclusive preorder downloadable content. Gamestop is the Evil Empire.
I felt like a mini rant.

Oh yea, and their prices suck.

[Frag Mortuus]

Agreed.

The ONLY time I buy from GS is when im buying a new release and thats because its going to be the same price anywhere you get it.

I actually hate the company pretty badly. I was going to trade in my Wii to them and they were going to give me $200 credit for everything (Which was a metric shit ton of games and stupid accessories). I sold it on eBay for $370 instead. I was going to trade in 16 PS2 games they were going to give me $26 total. I sold SOME of them here for nearly $100.

GS rips their customers off, they treat their employees like slaves and pay them nearly nothing, they hike up the prices of games way higher than other places, and they are an all around bad corporation.

Penny Arcade said it best when they called them an "upscale pawnshop".

[hashiriya1]

I think any shop in the business of buying used games (or anything, for that matter) buys low to sell high. It is just business. All the game shops I sold games and accessories to in Japan bought them for pennies. I didn't care, I just accepted it. Just sell your goods on ebay or racketboy.

[final fight cd]

i understand your pain, but its not like they are buying the games/systems from you to play themselves. they are buying them from you to resell and make a profit. that's how shit works.

[Betamax001]

And now they're throwing out artwork for PS2 games...and putting them in generic cases to "save space."

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Am I the only person that doesn't absolutely loath Gamestop. Some REALLY suck yes, but there are others that have awesome employees and good service.

[jfrost]

I liked Gamestop when I was in the US. They were very convenient (I could find one everywhere) and while their prices weren't incredibly low, they weren't not astonishingly high either. Also, while they're not a retro shop, they usually carry some retro stuff and most current stuff is readily available in their shops.

Pulling my foreigner hat again, it always seems that you Americans take a lot of things for granted. You shouldn't. Even basic services Gamestop provides aren't born out of thin air. They're costly. You might compare them unfavorably to local shops and smaller stores generally, but it's the very fact that Gamestop is not like them that gives them muscle to survive while the economy is in the toilet. I reckon other shops don't have the same luck.

[dedalusdedalus]

Dude, if you think Gamestop rips off its customers on trade-ins, you should see how some independent retro stores operate. Let's look at the economics of my local retro store, Video Games New York. They'll probably buy something like Resident Evil 2 from you for $5, then slap a sticker on it and sell it for $50 to some sucker. Takeaway of this is: brick and mortar stores have to buy low and sell high, and if you don't like it, sell on the internet.

I like retro game stores as much as anybody, but let's be realistic. 90% of the time, you'll score a better deal on retro games from ebay/amazon/half than you would at the independent retro game store.

It might be hip to hate on Gamestop, but I think their prices and their margins are actually much more reasonable than those of an independent video game store. Plus, they're generally slow to adjust their prices, so if you're diligent, you can scoop up extremely underpriced games (ICO was selling for 19.99 for the longest time, until they adjusted the price).

[the7k]

I actually hate the company pretty badly. I was going to trade in my Wii to them and they were going to give me $200 credit for everything (Which was a metric shit ton of games and stupid accessories). I sold it on eBay for $370 instead. I was going to trade in 16 PS2 games they were going to give me $26 total. I sold SOME of them here for nearly $100.

Did you... expect them to give you the same amount of money that they were going to sell it for?

OF COURSE you are going to make more money selling it to someone directly than selling it to GameStop. GameStop is a middle man. GameStop doesn't want to play your games, they want to make a profit - to expect them to pay out the same amount that other people would buy it for is ludicrous.

As for GameStop, I'm pretty damn thankful that they are around. If it weren't from them, my choices would be limited. I could shop at Wal-Mart or Target, who won't even think about stocking anything other than the latest Madden or Cabela's, or I could shop at FWE, where everything seems to have a $20 FWE tax.

[DCsegaDH]

Yeah, I don't care for them either. Even if they had retro stuff (ones around me don't) I probably wouldn't shop their because they use those ugly "Gamestop" cases. I would rather go to small game shops, but around where I live their isn't any good ones