GameStop sure has managed to grab headlines lately--with their adamant stance of being labeled as an essential business, and the eventual backing down as they closed their doors days following the launch of two major game releases: Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons--now the brick and mortar retailer has yet another announcement to make. GameStop will permanently be closing down over 300 locations this year. A quarterly earnings report showed that the company actually managed to turn a profit this quarter, to the tune of $21 million, even though overall sales were down compared to the same timeframe in 2019. Overall, for the entire fiscal year, GameStop lost $187.7 million. This has led executives to the decision to "de-densify", by closing "around" 320 locations by the end of this year.

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[weatMod]

I knew it was over when the store started to look more like a thinkgeek outlet than a game shop

Bummer tho as I did like popping in when I was on a trip to the mall - not that I ever bought much

don't worry there aren't going to be any "malls" anymore
even before the virus it was pretty much a done deal already , the retail apocolypse was all that was needed, the last time i went to the mall was in like January or February , the high end mall mind you with the Coach and Burberry stores , the upper middle class mall not the ghetto mall
and everything was closing down from CVS to William Sonoma to Pottery Barn to the sneaker and sporting goods stores
nobody is going to survive this ,no malls no stores, no restaurants
we are heading into a dystopian future where there is only Amazon and a couple of big box stores and literally nothing else

 

[x65943]

don't worry there aren't going to be any "malls" anymore
even before the virus it was pretty much a done deal already , the retail apocolypse was all that was needed, the last time went to the mall was in like January or February , the high end mall mind you with the coach and Burberry stores , the upper middle class mall not the ghetto mall
and everything was closing down from CVS to William Sonoma to Pottery Barn to the sneaker and sporting goods stores
nobody is going to survive this ,no malls no stores, no restaurants
we are heading into a dystopian future where there is only Amazon and a couple of big box stores and literally nothing else

Hm. Personally I don't really agree. I think things will go back to business as usual soon.

Stores that were already on the brink of collapse will collapse, but I don't think this will significantly accelerate that process.

 

[Redhorse]

Time to do some serious dumpster diving, I would just ask others to stay at least 3 feet away from my dumpster, please... you know, so as to not spread a virus, while I swim in filth, disease, and bacteria while looking for cash.

 

[JayMathis]

I have thought about the idea of malls closing one day, but I don't think if they do it'll be any time soon. I live close to my mall and it's always packed to the brink still. I rarely go to them but plenty of people do.

 

[Ev1l0rd]

don't worry there aren't going to be any "malls" anymore
even before the virus it was pretty much a done deal already , the retail apocolypse was all that was needed, the last time went to the mall was in like January or February , the high end mall mind you with the coach and Burberry stores , the upper middle class mall not the ghetto mall
and everything was closing down from CVS to William Sonoma to Pottery Barn to the sneaker and sporting goods stores
nobody is going to survive this ,no malls no stores, no restaurants
we are heading into a dystopian future where there is only Amazon and a couple of big box stores and literally nothing else

Ehhh I don't think so.

We'll be hitting rough times, sure, but retail stores will survive. Yeah, Amazon and co. will be able to tank it the best, but there's been a lot of effort, if not in the US at least internationally to prevent as many retail stores as possible from going out of business. Over here, there's currently already around 20000 requests from these businesses to have the state pay employees as if they had no job, but whilst still being employed (so the employer doesn't have to pay them).

 

[weatMod]

Hm. Personally I don't really agree. I think things will go back to business as usual soon.

Stores that were already on the brink of collapse will collapse, but I don't think this will significantly accelerate that process.

hope you are right but i don't think so
margins were already thin and this shutdown is not ending anytime soon , US surpassed Italy and China and Italy reported 969 new death over night even with the lock down
it's not slowing down
the only ones that will survive are the ones who got the 4 trillion in bailouts , the walmarts, the Amazons , the Targets maybe home depot and or lowes
not much else

 

[FAST6191]

Gosh, people applauding this are so clueless. The one and last dedicated brick and mortar gaming store is in trouble and all you can do is have glee about it? How will a reduction in competition and another forced drive towards digital (where you do NOT own games) amongst a myriad of other issues such as high pricing, account issues and draconian rules in terms of refunds etc ever be good for the end consumer?

Its sad to see humanity so utterly, desperately ignorant towards what's actually good for itself, as long as they get to make an inconsequential point.

P.s: Also, you utter geniuses, people who worked for gamestop can't just go out and find jobs anywhere, if they could, they wouldn't be working for gamestop. Come on. Oh the face palm.

Being a dedicated (though even that is arguable these days -- others mentioned all the merch and other their shift towards mobile phones was fairly well documented) brick and mortar shop does not make them good. I would like a good shop, but in the meantime I will happily take online, sales from supermarkets, maybe a few independents and whatever else is out there.

You will not have to look hard to find me railing on not being able to resell downloadable games, however I don't especially see gamestop as a bulwark against it.

As far as gamestop peeps not being able to get other jobs... other basic retail jobs appear to also exist (though the robots are probably coming for them). Personally I take jobs on the basis of "meh, might have something interesting" vs "definitely won't have something interesting" and if it is a choice between giving someone a grease laden foodstuff of mechanically recovered meat and sugar or possibly being able to talk about games then you know which one I will pick (though in the contest of retail vs death I would run headlong for death).
Mind you I have never particularly got the whole desire to express all the emotion about others losing a job.

 

[Ev1l0rd]

As far as gamestop peeps not being able to get other jobs... other basic retail jobs appear to also exist (though the robots are probably coming for them). Personally I take jobs on the basis of "meh, might have something interesting" vs "definitely won't have something interesting" and if it is a choice between giving someone a grease laden foodstuff of mechanically recovered meat and sugar or possibly being able to talk about games then you know which one I will pick (though in the contest of retail vs death I would run headlong for death).

Quite frankly, I don't think machines will completely take over retail jobs, at least not for like... the next 40-50 years. Like, yeah we'll see an uptick in the automation, but they did a test run a few months ago here on an automated supermarket with no employees.

It was an utter mess, and the result was a supermarket that was essentially a series of vending machines and they still needed employees on the standby in case one of the machines got stuck.

At the same time, a lot of people do still value the human interaction, especially elderly people who often don't speak with other folks that much.

As for the employees... yeah it will suck for them. That said, I don't think many will be homeless, if there's one sector that takes you no matter what (as long as you can look a bit cleaned up and don't have anything that screams "I make bad life decisions") it's going to be retail. Hell, at least from personal experience in retail, I'd say other retail stores will more often treat their employees nicer than how GameStop seems to be treating their employees.

 

[CeeDee]

While I understand the "hahahaha fuck gamestop" mentality most gamers have, it's literally all I have in town to get games from aside from fucking Walmart. I hope it sticks around locally.

 

[FAST6191]

Quite frankly, I don't think machines will completely take over retail jobs, at least not for like... the next 40-50 years. Like, yeah we'll see an uptick in the automation, but they did a test run a few months ago here on an automated supermarket with no employees.

It was an utter mess, and the result was a supermarket that was essentially a series of vending machines and they still needed employees on the standby in case one of the machines got stuck.

At the same time, a lot of people do still value the human interaction, especially elderly people who often don't speak with other folks that much.

As for the employees... yeah it will suck for them. That said, I don't think many will be homeless, if there's one sector that takes you no matter what (as long as you can look a bit cleaned up and don't have anything that screams "I make bad life decisions") it's going to be retail. Hell, at least from personal experience in retail, I'd say other retail stores will more often treat their employees nicer than how GameStop seems to be treating their employees.

I am going to have to do the implementation vs possibility/feasibility question for that one. Robots already demonstrably work great at warehouses for shuffling things around, and supermarkets operating the pile it high and sell it cheap model are doing very well indeed these days (assuming you are in the Netherlands then there was a stark contrast between lidl there and a more upmarket supermarket there when I was last running around there, and lidl works in a great number of places). Robots already work great in supermarkets at checkouts, and people already seeming content enough to scan their produce (if they are not outright having home delivery) as they go around. Couple it with a nice vision system and something like better AI in robots (both of which already exists, though maybe not in something they can buy off the shelf right now).
Get enough of that together and you can kick the few jobs you have to more skilled peeps there more to look after the robots and do a bit. No bored high school kids, grandparents looking for something to pass the time and 20 somethings then unless they are engineers -- we have already seen this in factories where the countries in question frown on slave labour, and farms are doing pretty well for it these days too. This is to say fully automated is probably a ways off* but automated enough that the kids are right out (as was the point of discussion) is a different matter.
Elderly and whatnot will probably die off (average lifetimes seem to be stagnant right now, what with all the fat bastards) before too terribly long (the 20 and 30 somethings that programmed Windows 95 are all nearer retirement than not right now, assuming that holds) and those few you still have can probably field questions.

*I would like to see a redbox (DVD rental box for the unfamiliar, swipe credit card and go) type setup here where you can scan in your old games (or have them dumped, probably cleaned and automatically tested far more reliably than the kid not paid to care, linked up to a phone application or something that scans in to determine rates and desired locations for things/wishlists as it were) and buy new ones (DVD cases not being that large and thus being able to fit a fair selection in there).

Edit

While I understand the "hahahaha fuck gamestop" mentality most gamers have, it's literally all I have in town to get games from aside from fucking Walmart. I hope it sticks around locally.

What if when the gamestop closes it opens up a possibility for a local shop that gives a shit where right now their business would be siphoned off and be unable to do?

 

[g00s3y]

Fuck gamestop, they deserve to go out of business.

 

[Ev1l0rd]

I am going to have to do the implementation vs possibility/feasibility question for that one. Robots already demonstrably work great at warehouses for shuffling things around, and supermarkets operating the pile it high and sell it cheap model are doing very well indeed these days (assuming you are in the Netherlands then there was a stark contrast between lidl there and a more upmarket supermarket there when I was last running around there, and lidl works in a great number of places). Robots already work great in supermarkets at checkouts, and people already seeming content enough to scan their produce (if they are not outright having home delivery) as they go around. Couple it with a nice vision system and something like better AI in robots (both of which already exists, though maybe not in something they can buy off the shelf right now).

Yeah, I'm in the Netherlands.

Lidl is... weird here. It's a low end supermarket. It's not the retail store I work at, so I can't speak much for how it treats their employees but I have worked in the past for a supermarket in the same range as them, and honestly, they sucked to work for.

Over in my store, we do have automated checkout, but even that needs employees to make sure that nobody's stealing stuff. And yeah, you can have like 13 registers thanks to that and it prevents the store from becoming overburdened unless there's a buying craze (...covid has been one hell of an experience so far), but you still need roughly the same amount of employees you'd need on a traditional 5 register setup (2 on the register, a third if it's busy, 1 at the service desk and 1 team leader).

And frankly, while I do expect to see changes to that automated checkout system (ie. ditching the dedicated scanners for just using a phone app which currently exists as an option already), at the same time I don't see the regular register going away anytime soon either.

Elderly people often prefer the register, but the same goes for people who buy beer crates, have physical cash or have food that needs to be weighed on checkout (there's ways to register those on the automated checkouts, but most people don't know how to do so) or just have a lot of stuff.

 

[DaveLister]

But they are an essential service .

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah, I'm in the Netherlands.

Lidl is... weird here. It's a low end supermarket. It's not the retail store I work at, so I can't speak much for how it treats their employees but I have worked in the past for a supermarket in the same range as them, and honestly, they sucked to work for.

Over in my store, we do have automated checkout, but even that needs employees to make sure that nobody's stealing stuff. And yeah, you can have like 13 registers thanks to that and it prevents the store from becoming overburdened unless there's a buying craze (...covid has been one hell of an experience so far), but you still need roughly the same amount of employees you'd need on a traditional 5 register setup (2 on the register, a third if it's busy, 1 at the service desk and 1 team leader).

And frankly, while I do expect to see changes to that automated checkout system (ie. ditching the dedicated scanners for just using a phone app which currently exists as an option already), at the same time I don't see the regular register going away anytime soon either.

Elderly people often prefer the register, but the same goes for people who buy beer crates, have physical cash or have food that needs to be weighed on checkout (there's ways to register those on the automated checkouts, but most people don't know how to do so) or just have a lot of stuff.

Most of the people I speak to working at Lidl seem like they like it, and they pay pretty well for that sort of work too*. Met some managers as well and they seem to do well also. What a given company is like seems largely immaterial though for this discussion -- roll out a nice palette (possibly via robot) with boxes on it and let the people pick for themselves, sending a sweeper around occasionally to return things to their proper spot.

Still needs employees but if you can drop needed numbers you can start to select for better people than just someone with a pulse that is willing to work for bottom dollar. It is at that point that the high school kids start to be properly troubled as it becomes more viable for people with real skills and desire, and no need to work around complicated school schedules and regs for hiring kids. Or go a bit further and warrant your people have tech/engineering skills.

I also have seen banks and all their complicated functions be kicked to automated machines rather than tellers and old people take to them well enough (also again barring things like http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/ then people that have realistically had computers all their lives will not long start dying off or at least retiring or theoretically reaching retirement age if nothing else). Not to mention you can get a nice on demand type register going on if someone rocks up with something complicated (cash is a solved issue for the most part, or is around here), indeed many things already do something like this.

*I remember one time I actually bothered to take a recruitment agency seriously and not just as worthless parasites I went past a lidl on the way there and they had a big banner noting that even their lowest peons would be earning more than my fancy STEM degree and then some possessing self would be getting after the agency took their cut.

 

[campbell0505]

While I understand the "hahahaha fuck gamestop" mentality most gamers have, it's literally all I have in town to get games from aside from fucking Walmart. I hope it sticks around locally.

I have other stores around (Target) that stock switch games, but they stock very little compared to EB Games where I live. I get that it sucks on a corporate level, but I like the one near me.

 

[DS1]

Press “F” my dudes and dudettes

 

[the_randomizer]

Gee, I wonder why!

 

[Xzi]

Ask not for whom the bell tolls...

And yeah, of course this sucks for the employees, but the writing has been on the wall for years. Nobody should've been caught off guard by this, Gamestop's business model has always been ass.

 

[Deleted User]

Shops like this - GAME as well - will be going the way of Blockbuster soon enough. I'm honestly surprised they haven't already - I guess Netflix streaming and so on are even more pervasive with even bigger audiences than gaming, and so would spell the end of DVD stores much quicker.

As long as Ashley keeps GAME running, it won't go bankrupt. Damn shipping is now £5.

 

[xdarkx]

GameStop just need a fresh restart.... without the greedy executives.