I would think they’d lose a lot of money and go under quickly.

I understand being irritated about spending $60 on a game and getting maybe $15 trade-in value for it, but that’s why you kinda don’t buy games blindly. Read reviews, ask your friends, rent it somewhere! Blockbuster needs all the support they can get anyway considering their financial position (possibility that they may go under this time next year, from some financial reports I’ve read).

I mean, listen, retailers like Walmart and Best Buy aren’t allowed to give you your money back or a different game if you try to return that $60 game you just bought. That’s copyright law, not corporate policy. And that game isn’t going to increase in value as it gets older, in fact it’ll decrease anywhere you go. So Gamestop does you a FAVOR by giving you at least SOMETHING back towards another game, right?

I have talked to the employees of my local Gamestop about the trade-in values, and they told me up front that if anybody doesn’t like their trade-in values, then we don’t have to trade the game in, it’s that simple. These same employees that I had the pleasure of talking to actually knew quite a lot about video games, they play games as much if not more so than I do, and they were very cool about it with absolutely no fanboy-ish dribble or bias. I’m aware that SOME locations have employees that don’t know so much, but that’s true about ANYWHERE. There are good employees and there are bad employees, doesn’t matter where you go.

And of COURSE they’re going to try and sell you things while you’re at the counter, they’re a BUSINESS, they have to make MONEY and to do that they have to sell GOODS and SERVICES. That’s kind of the point. Corporate puts pressure on them all the time to do that, just like how Walmart’s corporate office puts pressure on its stores to sell Walmart credit cards and extended service plans. They want your money, it’s how they’re going to survive, so if you don’t want what they’re pushing, say so and make your intended purchase(s).

I remember when Gamestops first showed up and they had people working for them that were just typical everyday gamers who would actually take interest in what YOU wanted and what type of game YOU were looking for, and would use all the knowledge they had to help you. Now we’ve got people in there acting like used car salesman that are desperate to just get rid of games. The fact is that they don’t care about what their customers want anymore, they just wanna see your money in their pocket and you walking out with a game. ANY GAME!

Aside from this gross mistreatment of their customers, the fact is that they ARE controlling prices. So their profit margins are, what’d you say? 8%? So what? THAT’S STILL PROFIT THEY AREN”T USING TO HIRE PEOPLE THAT DONT YELL IN MY FACE PUSHING STREET FIGHTER WHEN I WANT MY MONEY BACK FOR PREORDERING FF13! That’s still profit they aren’t using to improve the quality of their stores rather than building up new stores every five blocks.

Again, I think you mislead from the actual argument with the whole profit margins thing. An 8% profit margin doesn’t seem like much, but when you take 8% of a multi-billion dollar industry that’s being almost monopolized by the company, well…you can see where I’m going with this. You can’t compare Apple’s industry of computers to Gamestop’s industry of video game retail by simply looking at profit margin percentages. Consider the industry. Apple doesn’t have the market on computers cornered, Gamestop DOES when it comes to their industry. So, the fact remains, they give us a very small percent of what our sold game is worth, IN STORE CREDIT, and then turn a profit with it IN COLD HARD CASH.

Usually business’ that have employees like this and a hopelessly failed system of store credit trade ins that DO rip off the customer either fail or get their act together and give customers what they want. Why? Because the customer lets them know it by fulfilling their needs elsewhere. The only problem is, we can’t do that. Because the only place in town to buy and sell your used games is Gamestop!

Maybe I’m just another angry customer, and I guess the reason for that is because Gamestop has taken a very big passion in my life and turned it into some corporate powerhouse that’s lost their essential love for gaming and become everything I hate: Starbucks.

I will end this note with a message that I whole-heartedly support:
Are you’re a fellow gamer that’s tired of castration by the gamer retail market that Gamestop has produced? Then let’s all do our part and BURN THE GAMESTOP

Chris Moran