28 Confessions of a GameStop Shift Supervisor is the title of the article that accompanied my breakfast bagel and hot chocolate. I had noticed it last night on GameTab, but I was so frustrated with this war and the God-King’s lack of a prompt response that I ended up expending all physical and ethereal energies. That is to say, I passed out at 9:30 before reading it.
So, after checking the Dojo this morning, I delved back in to see what sort of confessions a GameStop Shift Supervisor would make, and if he truly thought they would reconcile his ties to El Diablo.
The article is humorous. Not in a way that made me laugh, but in a way that made me sneer at the fact they would actually release something so ridiculous and blatantly offensive. 28 Confessions of a GameStop Shift Supervisor makes it sound like it will be a story of lust, intrigue and scandal at the highest levels of the GameStop infrastructure.
Instead, it is merely a buyer’s guide. A guide that says “Shop at our store this way, or go fuck yourselves.”
You should already have a window open. In fact, I hope you jumped to reading it before you came here, because if you have ever purchased a game from GameStop (known as EBGames here), you will recognize most of the issues that this fellow is talking about. Let us consider some of the more obvious ones:
1) The Open Games Issue/Gutted Games
It becomes clear from the first six points of these admissions that all of the real issues will be dodged.
At EBGames, you will find that copies of certain software are often removed from their packaging so that the boxes can be displayed and examined without fear of theft. In a correlative frequency, these “gutted’ games are sold to the consumer at full price. The GameStop Shift Supervisor (I am going to call him Frank from now on) acknowledges that there are ways to verify the disc is in reasonable condition, and there are policies in place to ensure you can return a product “unopened” as you would with a factory-sealed game.
What he does not acknowledge is the fact that you still pay full price for an already opened game. You are paying the MSRP for a game that has been opened, and - for all you know - has been played by someone within the store. In fact, how can you be sure that Mr. A did not purchase the game on launch day, take it home, play it, trade it in, and now you are getting an essentially used copy of the game (while paying full price). This is the twisted and depraved world that EBGames/GameStop operates within. Conventional consumer-retailer relations are tied down and dismembered. They will squeeze any money that they can out of you.
This is further exemplified by the next issue.
2) Trade-Ins
Everybody should be aware by now that the profits from EBGames/GameStop do not come from the sale of use games. It comes from two locations: pre-orders, and trade-ins. They are essentially a gaming pawn shop, where they offer you a measly amount of cash for your valuables, only to resell them at an inflated cost.
Frank points out the issue they have with people coming in to trade off some out-of-date sporting titles (Madden 98, etc). While I will acknowledge that these are obviously not worth much, he also brings up the issue of fantastic games like Super Smash Bros. Melee. Here’s a quote:
Games in high demand are, appropriately, worth much more. This doesn’t just mean RECENT games like Bioshock and Halo 3. Super Smash Bros for the Gamecube is still trading in for fifteen dollars at the time of this writing; much more than any other Gamecube game. Games or items we are likely to resell are worth far more than ones that are incomplete, in poor shape, unpopular, or overly plentiful.
So, they will pay people fifteen dollars for a copy of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Are you kidding me? Super Smash Bros. Melee has never received a price drop. EBGames still sells Super Smash Bros. Melee at a full retail price of $49.99. Ouch. That’s gotta hurt someone’s pockets. But hey, that’s all profit for EBGames. Lucky them. Their entire business operates on a closed circuit, where the same product can cycle through time and time again while they pocket all the coin. It is absolutely ridiculous.
A tip: If you want to sell your old games, try eBay. You can make a lot more money.
3) Bad Service
This is only partially acknowledged in the article. Frank acknowledges that employees often pressure people for pre-orders because it is essential to their job security. What I have noticed from all my EBGames experiences in various areas is that you will only get assistance if you want to pre-order. Otherwise, they ignore you. When I was looking for Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (thanks again Stu for finding it), I went to the local EBGames to see if they had it. They did not. So I asked them if they could check any nearby stores. They said I could just look up their phone number and call them myself.
Thanks for the help. Especially when I have now been told that these stores are equipped with an “On-Hand Lookup” that would assist me in finding a copy. Brilliant.
I am amazed that people decry the practices of Wal-Mart and yet they remain oblivious to the clear manipulation and extortion that goes on at EBGames.