Boy, I sure do love having some rude twat try to push a Nintendo 3DS bundle preorder on me while I'm just trying to look for a used copy of Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Or coming to pick up my preorder and them not having the fucking preorder DLC codes I bought the game from their shitty store for in the first place AND being dicks about it when asked

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      When you're raised in the suburbs and half your childhood is being fed out of the corporate trough, its just standard nostalgic fare.

      I have fond memories of playing in the Kids Zone at McDonalds and riding the rides at AstroWorld and going to the mega-mall to ice skate and see the tree lighting at Christmas. That's just what there was to do in Suburbia during the 80s/90s/00s. Can't really blame people for feeling fond of their youth.

    • shitstorm [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      If you didn't have X as a kid, you didn't have a childhood

      Very cool meme to shit on people who grew up poor.

  • buh [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I used to love going to my local video game store

    Then it closed down and was replaced by a GameStop

    • medium_adult_son [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I remember going to my local game store and selling a PSP jrpg for more than I bought it for. GameStop would have paid pennies for it, because they didn't have to. GameStop showed up in the same strip mall, and the local store closed shortly thereafter.

      GameStop is Starbucks, except there was never a competitor to GameStop, or even a large regional competitor afaik, like Dunkin/Tim Hortons, to force them to "compete" in a "free market." Most people didn't sell their games online to get around this, they were going into a store to buy the newest game right there and then.

      Capital: there's not enough profit being squeezed out of this opportunity, so I'll advertise more, make exclusive pre-order dlc deals with publishers, and build across the street from local game shops to destroy them, then stop paying as much for trade-ins because I don't have to.

  • marxisthayaca [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Oh my god, fucking this. I remember dropping by with a bunch of games and they only wanted to give me like $9 total. While I was looking at their used collection and they had them at 30-55 dollars ea. I discovered Half.com and I never went back.

    • shitstorm [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      It's pretty much guaranteed that no adults ever trade in games of their own. Any adult who games can buy their own games. It's exclusively a practice to squeeze money out of children.

      • ElGosso [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        That's not true, it's also there so people who sell drugs can accept video games as payment.

      • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
        hexagon
        ·
        4 years ago

        I bought plenty of used Xbox 360 games to save money while being over 18

        Then I discovered you could get games for cheap ~6 months after release from online retailers so you didn't have to put up with GameStop

        Of course, these days it's all Steam and GoG

        • mwsduelle [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          There's also the high seas. Although, if I like a game I generally end up buying it and if I don't I just delete it.

  • grilldaddy [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I definitely brought a non-functioning Xbox in, told them it didn't work and they said no one checks and gave me $60 anyway. That ruled and I will treasure that memory forever.

    • Theblarglereflargle [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      A million years ago a dude who worked at GameStop did a zero punctuation style takedown of gamespot and he said company policy is that they don’t check because it’s cheaper to just give store credit

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Gamestop sucks and it will go out of business soon. The WSB thing is just a speculator bubble that was created by an internet forum instead of a bunch of oligarchs, and every bubble ends the same way.

    Hopefully they take a hedge fund down with them, that would be hilarious.

  • Phish [he/him, any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Gamestop sucks and always has. When Gamestops started popping up both the local game shops in my area eventually closed, though one got bought by Gamestop. It was a stripped down, sad, bullshit shell of what the shop used to be. The cool guys that worked there were all gone except one guy who got a job at the Gamestop. He seemed sad as fuck after the change and eventually quit. The trade in value went down like 700%, the used game selection was ass, and they just wanted to sell you extra shit like game insurance and subscriptions to game informer. Anybody who has good memories of Gamestop is either lying or never went to a game store that wasn't a soulless corporate chain.

  • Tofu_Lewis [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    The only positive memory I have of a game store is waaay back in the day at an indoor mall because they had Scorched Earth set up on a computer and I could play it while my parents shopped.

    • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Browsing at a good game store -video, board or tabletop- can be fun but GameStop's always been a place you don't want to spend more than 3 minutes in

      • Tofu_Lewis [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Good point - I have enjoyed wandering around independently owned board/tabletop stores, but never a gamestop.

  • flees [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    They opened up an EB Games(owned by GS) and a GameStop in the same shopping strip mall as this popular local game store that would give you a decent value for your trades and a had good selection. It was odd as there were also a GameStop about a block away as well. Anyhow, these GS and EB locations both constantly ran buy one get one deals on used games for like a solid year and the local game store just couldn’t compete, they ended up closing. After that the GS and EB closed, directing customers to go to the GS a block down.

  • TheBroodian [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    The GME stock thing is still ongoing (it's a fucking ENORMOUS bubble), and I feel like it's important to take note that it actually has very little to do with gamestop, and has everything to do with market capitalism and it's going to bring us the second coming of 2008.

    • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      I thought the price had tanked and effectively ended the whole thing?

      I feel like it’s important to take note that it actually has very little to do with gamestop

      I know, GameStop nostalgia was just one small but particularly annoying current in the larger GME stream of bullshit

      • TheBroodian [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        A gamma squeeze ended, but the shorts held by hedgefunds were never covered, and they've been shorting more, almost millions a day since to try to keep the price low. Price jumped just this Wed from $40 to $180. It's a huge fucking bubble, and when it pops, the entire market is going to have to contract to pay the bill that they've created for themselves.

  • Doomer [comrade/them,any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Sometimes having the person at Gamestop harrass me to pre-order something was the most human intertaction I would get for long stretches of time.

  • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    All game stores are horrible predatory consumerist rackets, but GameStop was notable for being the worst of the lot.

    If you're absolutely going to trade in your videogames at a 90% markdown, at least support your local business tyrants instead of this corporate trash.

    • JayTwo [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Funco sold me a defective used Dreamcast, and when I tried to return it, they made me play it until it happened. So I did, and every time it screwed up, about half an hour in, they claimed I did something to make it error, or it was the game, reset it, and made me try again, with a different game.

      So I was there for eight hours, pretending to be stupid, trying not to get mad, it erroring about 15-20 times by then, and they only gave me a refund after I refused to leave.

      Fuck Funco