And this is the store that's supposed to be taking over Game and Gamestation in the UK. Yay!

I swear, my town has the only good Gamestop in the world.

You shop at Best Buy? Eww.

Also, requisite "I could do an analyst's job even though I don't know the first thing about it" comment, so I can be one of da cool kids.

I worked at the best gamestop, with the bestcrew, I've ever seen in one. This study is correct. Corporate is fucking assholes. I was number one in preorders and still got chewed out. Hours cuts constantly, it goes on and on...

No fucking joke, today is my first day as the SGA at a gamestop.

I started working at a Babbage's right after high school, and watched as the Gamestop takeover slowly turned game stores into depressing number-crunching salesfests. Of course any company wants to improve their profit margins, but weekly conference calls pitting store managers against each other and enforcing a constantly-competitive atmosphere where the focus was more reservations, more Game Informer subscriptions, and more used-over-new sales instead of customer service or looking for a symbiotic relationship between publishers and consumers made for a hell of a depressing phenomenon to witness.

I climbed the ladder and lasted as a store manager just over 2 years before feeling like I was heading straight for a mental breakdown and changed careers.

GameStop was easily the worst job I've ever had. I hated that place with a passion. I lost a friend because of it and I abhorred my boss. It's sad, too, because both people were nice outside of work.

Why don't more people shop online?

well duh

WHOA WHOA WHOA

Hertz is a rental car place?!?! All these years I thought they just made donuts.

I worked there, many friends have worked there, none of us have a single nice thing to say about it. My friend Jay was fired because he wasn't pushing pre-orders with every customer. My friend Luke was fired very recently because he told a customer NOT to buy a used Xbox 360 from the store. I quit after I watched my manager convince a Mom that the Xbox 360 can play Blurays.

It was, without a doubt, the worst place I have ever worked. They require you to be slaves, and treat customers as meat. Every thing about that place was horrible. From the way the stack used games in the bathroom, to the way they "forget" to scan a game when a customer trades in 10 or more, since most customers don't notice and it is pure profit for the store.

Yes, you read that right, we were told that if a customer trades in 10 or more used games at once, we should "forget" to scan one of them, since most people won't notice. We were told that, depending on the game, try to "forget" to scan the one with the most value. I watched so many people get robbed because of this. I have watched so many kids get robbed blind.

I can attest to this. Luckily I had a decent crew, but the corporate side was the one of the worst run, out of touch with the customer businesses I've ever work for.

Nail on the head. Working there was exciting!......for the 1st month or two....then u begin to peel back the layers of BS that make up GS business practices. I got put into so many Catch 22 situations as an SGA...I feel sorry for my Manager and AssMan. I shop at a diff location now, I just don't sell them any of my stuff!

I've had really nice experiences at Gamestops across the country. Nice employees who shared my passion and excitement for video games really made the shopping experience pleasant. Then there was that sniveling little shit who asked me why I was buying a game as if he was the arbiter of taste in his store. But that was more a personality flaw on his part than shitty corporate practices. I don't trade my games in there anymore as I get much better value for my games on amazon and ebay. I'd rather use Gamefly to play games and ebay and Amazon to sell games and buy my games for the lowest price possible.

Ohh and I basically had to quit or get fired for not circling receipt for dumb ass customer surveys! Which BTW, you can't force customers to take!!! Assholes.

I know the people that works at the local gamestop so im gonna belive it. They already work retail which is bad enough. But when i hear the stories about clueless customers that just wont listen... oh and the christmas stories. Oh those are the best.

Being an sga sucks, but it is better than asst. man or manager

The unfortunate truth to all this is that I still prefer them to a publisher controlled digital market.

@Seph
Well, my GameStop is great as well. The people there are real with me, know what I do, and treat their customers accordingly, regardless of their gaming background.

But that doesn't mean the District/Corporate Arm is cutting them a ton of slack. It just means they're great people, but company policy is a different issue.

"The study says that GameStop puts high sales over and above customer service, while workers criticized the pressure put upon them to push pre-orders on their patrons."

Of all my friends that have worked there, they mostly share this sentiment. While a lot of employees may be amicable to customers simply based on having a good personality, corporate will often focus on sheer numbers rather than customer satisfaction.

Of course, numbers matter. But other companies do tend to strike a balance between sales and satisfaction (between satisfaction of course, leads to repeat sales).

well I can't say anything about gamestop but I did regularly visit a local game store quite a lot to buy my games and I wouldn't mind working there as the people working there where often playing retro games themselves. Nowadays I just buy my games online (not digital) because its outside of sales the cheapest way to get them.

i think it's good business practice to have satisfied customers if you want repeat business.

so focusing on numbers alone is a recipe for failure.


i mean, i think it's safe to say people don't shop there because of the prices.

I doubt that. I mean, worse than a produce farm or a slaughterhouse or *any* fast food job? The employees at my local store are really friendly and love to talk your ear off. And usually you can get a refund from a pre-order at any time before the game releases. And even if you can't it's only $5.

I wasn't really surprised to find out that the security cameras in the Gamestop I used to shop at were only useful to keep an eye on the employees. Of the 2 cameras in that store, one was in the stock/break room and the other was over the counter pointed at who ever was working the register.

I worked at an awesome gamestop, but it was because it had fantastic managers willing to bend corporate policy as much as possible. Priority for hours is supposed to go to those with the most preorder and rewards card sign ups, but if you get a reputation for being a good employee who shows up whenever they call for extra help, you start getting the first call for extra hours. Corporate Gstop is the worst, though. It's the only retail job I ever worked where I had to turn out my pockets and then lift up my pant legs and spin around before I could leave a shift.

The GameStop at the mall across the street from us (yeah, for real) had really incompetent managers and used to bullshit customers and send them to our store where the customers were enraged when our manager would tell them we couldn't help them because the other store gave them wrong info. We used to prank call them when it was slow. Good times!

also, damn those ottomans

i always wondered why these gamestop-employees keep asking me to spend 3€ for an extended guarantee although they know that i always decline that offer. Now i am sure they use this tiny time-window to blink: "Call the Police" in Morse-code.

Having spent time there as a Game Advisor, they just don't want you to deal with customers the way you should. The guys I worked with are great, but our numbers weren't based on suggestives sales or return customers, but pre-orders and magazine subscriptions.

They overexpand, understaff, the raises there aren't even in proper increments for retail and the benefits are non-existent. They just held a job fair in my area and they didn't even have the hours to keep people they took on a year to two years ago.

What's more is my store was always setting sales records, pre-orders through the roof and its like it never happened. We're shit on more than any store in the district. And what's really cute is that if they can't give you hours at all, they'll still dispute an unemployment claim, even go so far as to ask you to quit so you can't claim anything.

I enjoyed working with customers and I went above and beyond to help them WITHOUT shoving that pre-order/magazine shit it their faces. Sadly, this is how it should be, but not what gets you ahead at Gamestop.

I don't see them being around much longer how they expand without being able to pay anyone.

Also, even as bad as Gamestop is, its heavenly compared to Dell. Dell is a fucking shithole. I wonder where they ranked. I never ever worked at a place so many people hated in unison.

@Sohei: Can't speak for the others, but yes, worse than fast food in my experience.

My wife worked there for six agonizing weeks, and I can tell you that this is absolutely true. She wound up not being able to take it anymore and told her manager she quit while he was working with a customer, saying that she couldn't work there anymore without killing herself.

Man, I'm glad she's done with that awful place. I try to never give them my money, if I can avoid it.

I asked for umvc3 and kof13 about two months ago at a gamestop. First off, the dude had no clue about kof even tho he was just telling me how awesome fighting games are when I first asked for umvc3. Then, he comes back with the game in a slip cover, says they have no case and told me that the game was 37 even tho brand new it was 39. When I pointed that out, he told me how hard the game was to come by now. Being the nice person I am, I didn't call him out on his bullshit and instead simply said I think ill look for it elsewhere, which is something I regret. If I were an uninformed customer, I might have believed his bs and bought the game from him. A wasted opportunity

Long story short, guy tried to sell me a used game without a case or booklet, then made it seem like I would having trouble finding elsewhere for a comparable price.

These people and this company suck ass. That is all.

I love buying new games from Gamestop. I always get games with the plastic cellophane already removed. That doesn't sketch me out at all.

I really hate having to go to Walmart and ask if they can unlock the game cabinet for something like Lollipop Chainsaw and get dirty looks from the cashier. I makes me feel like a child. That why I like Gamestop. The employee are nice and seem to enjoy gaming too. I do notice that the employees seem to come and go. It's a shame about the working conditions.

As usual with this kind of thing, it's not indicative of every Gamestop, certainly not the one I frequent. It sounds more like bad/power hungry managers at certain stores more than anything, and every retail chain in the world has those somewhere.

Hell, try shopping at a Best Buy around here, they're almost always pushy, throwing things in my face even when they know I'm just there for a single deal of the day item or sale. I remember one time, walking into a BB, an employee approached me and asked if I was interested in the 3DS, I told him I had one, he (pushingly) suggested I should buy one for a friend because of the gift card deal they had, and I said 'No, I don't have that much money.' He immediately turned his back to me and walked away without so much as a 'Have a nice day.' Not even 'OK.'

Say what you want about Gamestop, but not a single one in my area has ever done anything that dickish to me or anyone else in the store.

This is why I shop with Best Buy or Amazon 90% of the time unless I'm trading in games I can't sell to a friend or buying super old games I can't find anywhere else. If you're buying recent games, there's really no need to go to GameStop anymore. Best Buy is a better retailer, and Amazon has better deals. If they treat their employees like shit it just adds to my reasoning.

@tekbunny

Frustrating as it is, it sounds like he was just trying to his job. Every Gamestop employee that I've ever worked with or talked to is just as annoyed as you are when we have to sell a game without the original cover art when buying the game brand new only costs $2 more. As for the King of Fighters thing...I'm familiar with fighting games but I had no idea the game even existed until it showed up on release day. Even working at a game store, it's impossible to have knowledge on every single game that arrives on our shelves.

I don't disagree with you for choosing to find your game elsewhere, but I do think you might be being unnecessarily harsh to the employee.

My girlfriend was buying League of Legends points at Gamestop the other day and the guy asked her why she was, "wasting money and not playing DotA2." Some real fucking douchebags work at these stores.

I don't think I've ever had a good experience in any game store.

Hey, former fellow employees, any of you do parking lot deals? Like when the tic was a rip to the customer, so you go outside and buy their game for $20 instead of the shitty tic? Did that all the time.

The GameStop I go to still as for pre-orders, but I never get the sensation that they're trying to shove it down my throat. I actually have a good rapport with one of the guys that work there - he suggested Persona 3 Portable and got me hooked ever since.

Only time I had a bad experience was when the store brought in outside help for the Smash Bros. Brawl midnight release. The man went through 7 different Wii and DS games before he realized that I wasn't interested. And still asked if I wanted any damned accessories.

However, I can understand it being more of a corporate situation more than anything. I work at a retail job, and they keep us in the dark or come up with awkward practices that make no sense.

Phil: I didn't do it, but apparently it was a problem before I worked there because they had just installed camera facing out into the parking lot instead of just the door itself. How anyone could make that work now with the empty your your pockets, spin around, have a manager sign off before you can leave policy is beyond me unless you are able to surreptitiously tell them to meet you in after shift. If managers weren't around though, we'd tell them what the going rate was to sell it outside GameStop if they complained about the offer.

Yup I don't even shop at GameStop anymore. After the guy behind the counter called himself "one of those guys who laughs at idiots like you expect to come in the week of a games release and pick it up without a preorder" brcause i tried to pick up tales of the abyss on 3ds and they were sold out. I mean shitty service from GameStop seems almost standard nowadays, but come on!

I've had enough bad experiences that no preorder bonus or sale will get me to shop there. I'll go to my locally owned game shop (some of the nicest people ever) and if they don't have it, amazon.

@Peattrick That's more a product of the people that play those MOBA games. The communities in LoL, DOTA and HoN are horrid.

I was a manager at a Gamestop in MD for almost, after working my way up from a GA (back at EB Games before the merger). I was with the company for almost six years, and when I became a manager, my store was number one in the district that year for sales, reservations and customer service. I hired a staff that was as passionate about ganes as I was, where our knowledge of the product was an asset, and we became many in the neighborhoodd favorite store because we were honest and upfront with tge customrrs on policies, gameplay and product. As my six year anniversary approached, my DM took me aside and told me my back room (which was also his office) was a mess and that I was given a first and final to take care of it. Despite the standard schedule if 44 hrs a week, the DM expected us mgrs to work over this repeatedly, b/c we were ”salary”, so I put in the time and effort to organize my back room. One Friday, I worked from 1 in the afternoon to 3:30 am reorganizing my walls in the storefront. I left and came back at 7:30am and worked until I started halucinating at 11. I had my third key come in to finish what littlr was left. I was iff Sunday, and teturned to work on Monday, the day my DM was usually in his office. My plan was, due to the shelf reorganizing, I would spend the afternoon in the back cleaning the backroom once my other third key arrived. Once he did, howrver, my DM pulled me into the backroom. He asked me how I thought I was doing on the backroom cleanup. I said I thought UT was going well, byt that things this weekend had gotten a little in disarray from the floor reset and told him my plan for the afternoon. He said ”well, we haven't niticed any change. You're terminated”. I was shocked. I said ”after all that work I did this weekend...?” To which he replied ”yes, I was going to fire you on Friday but I wanted to wait until you were finished”. I was aghast.

Turns out, no later than TWO HOURS after I was fired, someone else from the company had my job....but for less pay. They were just looking fot a reason to fire me. This also happened two days before u was to get my sick and pto and vacation time again. They clearly didn't want to pay that out to me.

I loved that job and was crushed when this happened. That was my livlihood, and my passion for games has not changed despite this. I actually see Ganestop doing this as a favir to me now, considering after I was gone, practices changed as stated in this article.

Postscript: the manager who took my place just quit about 3 months ago b/c he hated it so much. The third key I hired us now the manager.

lol i already said this 3-4 years ago.

the Dues Ex incident made it even worse.

i don't even know why people continue to shop on gamestop.

amazon alone shits on it in terms of price, quality(not freaking open) as well as fast shipping without even leaving your home.

the only times i buy on gamestop is when there's an exclusive edition like Metal Gear Solid LE, or the upcoming Dead or Alive 5 premium edition and so.

the thing is why the FUCK does companies keep making deals with bullshit stores like this.

if the LE games were available on amazon, i would have gotten them fucking day 1, instead they keep shoving this on shitty retail stores like gamestop.

i agree with some of the people here, they keep shoving those pre order and subscription Bullshit, or gift cards, a guy even tried to sell me MW3.

i already sold mine, tried to give the game a chance after only buying COD4, 3 years is still the same shit; though i should have tried Black Ops, it looks much better and more fun but ahh i give up on this series.

while i meet good people there, most of the people are just plain clueless and misinformed.

the incident with Peace Walker was the worst, sure i didn't pre ordered it, but the guy was willing to give me the Limited Edition of the game since they have more in stock than their pre orders, then this stupid lady cancelled it since it's only reserve for pre orders.

i mean if you have more than what you order and there's a customer willing to buy it up front cash not credit what the fuck do you do???

i already gave gamestop alot of chance, this will the last fucking chance for Dead or Alive 5 premium edition and Tekken Tag 2 pre order dlc.

i hope MGS rising LE is available on amazon.

fuck gamestop

I was a multi-store manager for Gsme Stop for a few years and can honestly tell you it was sheer hell. Employees are treated like easily replaceable cogs and the "adds" are the main evaluation tool. But it was actually better than when it was FuncoLand. THAT was a little slice of hell.

@molamo: See, even though we had pocket checks, we all were friends and let each other do whatever as long as it is was off camera, and outside. We also took smoke breaks and did food runs. Our only problem was our ass-cancer ridden dm. Karma's a bitch. He really got ass cancer.

You don't have to trade in your games at gamestop. Want more money? Do more leg work - go to craigslist, ebay or amazon if you want more. Also, Gamestop has 50% bonus trade in deals sometimes. That, coupled with member rewards gets you come nice store credit sometimes.


Still, I get salty when I'm calling 20 different stores for FF 13-2 for PS3 and none of them have it used. Not a single employee told me I can get the new one from their store for $2 more - $17.99 vs $19.99. Really? f***** really? Not helping the customer in that situation.

People are turned into machines.

Having worked for the company for years, the absolute apathy and disdain that Gamestop has shown to me and my co-workers employee has never ceased to shock me. What's funny is that, instead of the low-tear game advisers getting the worst treatment, they actually get better treatment than anyone in management. The higher up you go, the worse they treat you.

Gamestop treats its employees as if the company is doing EMPLOYEES a favor by LETTING them work for the company. I suppose if there's anything that Gamestop's awful working conditions has done positive is inspire me to go back and get my Masters. So thanks for that, Gamestop!