It May Even Be In Our Time

I somehow bumped into a video (aha, it was Kotaku) that detailed the many issues and Hell-like practices of our friendly neighborhood Gamestop on Youtube, to the style of Zero Punctuation.

Watch it here. Do it. it’s important. It’s also NSFW because of language (and the mutilation of stick figures, if anyone around you is offended by that), so get some headphones.

It’s a 9-part video series that goes on and on about Gamestop and how evil it is in everything it does. It even has a very thoughtful, well-thought-out conclusion.

I’ve hated Gamestop for a while now, but it’s usually been from the developer standpoint (which he mentions), where game creators actually get marginal money from sold games by Gamestop because the store relies so heavily on their pawnshop philosophy of buying and selling used games and that money never actually makes it back to the developer. Game devs only make money off the first “new” sale–not only that, but we make the tiniest revenue, with store fees, packing and shipping fees and publisher fees subtracted. In the end, game devs might make something like (this is not a fact) maybe five dollars off every new game sold. Imagine that when facts and figures are reported, we get numbers like “one million copies sold”. Most titles don’t ever get up to one million, and who knows how many of those millions are returns and sales of used copies, which means that in our model that that’s not actually five million dollars of revenue. And then subtract the cost of making the game.

Gamestop sucks on many, many levels, and I plan on probably never shopping there again if I can. I have SPORE reserved at an EB Games so when I get back to the States in a week, I may be making my final purchase. But then again, because Gamestop only holds on to your game for forty eight hours, and sometimes not even that long, my copy of SPORE might be gone already. In which case I will cancel my reservation and get my five bloody dollars back. I hope.

Watch the videos. Watch them. You, as a game consumer (because you are playing games if you are reading my blog, even if you’re a developer) need to be aware of how much money you are spending and saving off your purchases, especially when gas gets this high and every penny saved is earned. I know you’re going to keep buying games, even used games, so watching this video is an incredibly informative experience that teaches you what to do, what not to do, and where you should buy depending on what kind of game consumer you are. Whatever you do, do not shop at Gamestop anymore. And keep informed. Unless, of course, you enjoy being ripped off.

(I have to add: He makes a point about direct download and how it ideally will gradually take down Gamestop and how foolish it is to wait until then, to which I wanted to add as well: you also can’t forget the fact that people enjoy having hard, physical copies of their software, the same way they like getting sculpted World of Warcraft figurines of their level 70s. This means that there will probably always be a physical market for Gamestop to exist in. So it’s up to US, the consumers, to bring it down. Food for thought.)