GameStop Sales Down, Digital Sales Up!

I hate shopping at GameStop. I just want to get my game & leave, but the damn sales people won't leave me alone! Trying to checkout is the worst. Would you like to buy disc protection? Would you like to pre-order a game? Are you part of our rewards club? Would you like to buy the strategy guide? Ahhhhhhh!

Maybe it's just the Gamestop I shop at, but I don't have that problem. Of course it helps that I'm there enough that I know the people that work there, and they know me. When I go in, I look around, chat with them about games for a bit, maybe make a purchase and leave. I've never really had any problems with them trying to upsell me on anything.

Ridonkulous? Thank God for urbanditionary.com


Btw Nick cute bunny thumbnail. Your pet? Or a resident of your Asian Farm?

That whole thing about annoying you for pre-orders, disc protection, etc, is part of their job. If they don't do that, they get fired. I've had a few friends fired from Game Stop because of low pre-order, edge card, etc counts on their employee profile. Each day, every employee had to make an X amount of money for the store, and new game sales don't count toward that, only used games, pre-orders, edge cards, etc, count toward that total. So, low "X" number, no job, so they try to push it onto you as often as possible. Blame the system, not the employee.

Also, again, this is why companies are making games with content exclusive to new games. Doesn't make it right, nor is it justified to punish the customers (us), but there you go. Consequences to shady deals. It'd be like if you invented something, and this other guy made this great buyback program, and resold your invention at 70% reduced price, directly competing with you. Sketchy business practices for sure... still doesn't make it right to punish us, though.

I used to work at a Gamestop for about 3 years, and I'm not surprised that the regular sales have been dropping. Customer service is usually terrible due to the corporate offices giving out the bare minimum of hours to stores in general, then expecting us to work miracles on our meager amount of time. Since the numbers of subscriptions and pre-orders expected was tied to our number of transactions, it always left us at a disadvantage to be busy. Seeing as we were the only game store near to a military base and three small towns, we were plenty busy, and kept getting hours cut because we didn't meet our quotas.

Anything to avoid the service at a Gamestop is a good thing, it seems. We have spoken with our wallets.

Here's the way I see it:

1 Part Gamestop's policies
1 Part It's the slow season for brand new video games.

Give it time, they'll be back to making profits soon. Ugh...