this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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Gaming

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The move to digital sales is killing their business model.

They can't buy and re-sell used digital games.

Pre-orders on digital content can be done through the respective app stores.

Gamepass renders the buy, sell, re-buy consumer behavior irrelevant.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I mean, all that was intentional...

But this was a dying business years ago, it was propped up by a few people who made a shit ton of money and a whole bunch of idiots they convinced to hold the bag.

GameStop was never going to last long, it was just delayed

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

It should have ended years ago, it's a crap company who were annoying to do business with, it became a meme and got to live a few extra years. But I say good riddance

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

At the very least, two bag holders have read your comment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

It could if they were willing to modify their business model. They could have leaned into the game merchandise more but relying on used game sales was never going to be sustainable.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I’m always amazed by how the store near (Canada) me is always full. I don’t know I people are there to buy merch or what, but they’re never empty.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I go there to buy Nintendo games because I don't trust Nintendo not to do weird crap with their digital goods.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

basically nintendo and sony are dubious with digital,. since they dont host their own CDN, so the store is more prone to being shut down earlier than virtually all other competitors.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm old and buy physical whenever possible so I can trade them in when I'm done. It will suck when console online stores have the monopoly - I might have to go PC Master Race when that happens (complete with eyepatch).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

As someone who's been PC only for some time over a decade, I love digital. Having to store disks and search for them when I wanted them sucked. It's a shame used isn't an option, but that was never a great value to consumers anyway. It saved some money, but it was mostly sucked up as profit by whoever was reselling them.

I don't even have a disk drive on my computer. I have several fairly large drives so I can keep a good number of games installed at a time, and load times are faster than from a disk too. I couldn't imagine going back. There is the risk of losing it all when a storefront goes down, but that's already the case with modern physical games which have always online components or DRM locked to a network.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I mean, they're profitable for the first time since 2018. Not least thanks to a huge amount of cost cutting the past two or three years. This is more of that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

This is what everyone here is missing. They were unprofitable before and are net positive now. The cost cutting and business changes are working.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago

What! But they did absolutely nothing to prevent that!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'd do my part in buying games from them more if they didn't block my home network from their website lol. Yes it's behind a VPN, and no I'm not turning it off to give up my privacy just to buy something I can get from stores that won't block me.

I honestly used to buy games from them a lot, but once their website became inaccessible, I sorta forgot about them. Surely I'm not the only one right...?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

I stopped buying games from them when I went in the store and there weren't any games. It's just a bunch of FunkoPop garbage.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Has it not mooned yet? Apes must be in shambles.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (2 children)

That subreddit was simultaneously the funniest and creepiest subreddit I've ever visited. It's hilarious how sure they are that they will all be billionaires but I always got the creeps when thinking about how I was reading the comments from a bunch of people just throwing their life savings down the toilet.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

I bought a few thousand dollars because I could and I’m just sitting on it because I’m very curious what’s going to happen. I really believe the float has been locked up for a while and there’s some serious shenanigans going on. I either will strike it rich or at some point throw in the towel and write off the losses on my taxes. But I look back at when everyone wrote off Bitcoin and look at it now.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What an unfortunate way to learn thinkgeek is defunct

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

They were spiralling for years.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

As a Mexican I always loved visiting GameStop when I was in the USA, there was simply not a good replacement for GameStop here at those times, now there are some, but they barely look like a videogame store (full with merchandising and stuff), and as always Amazon MX has cheaper prices than local stores, hell even it has cheaper prices than Target or GameStop (compared when I was there last time some months ago).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Stock go up

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Buy the dip!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

I thought it said "understandable," and I was like, "yeah."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

They should merge with RadioShack and that company that rented DVD's out of ATM's in front of gas stations.