Hah! Gamestop CEO Quits After Three Months And Why I Think They Deserve All The Bad Things.

Now, I'm not one to laugh at another's misfortune*. In this case, however, I am not laughing at anyone's misfortune; more accurately, I am laughing at a company's misfortune. And that company, is gamestop. 

I don't like gamestop, and I have never hidden that fact. I don't like walking into one of their little jip joints and feeling like I just arrived at a used car lot. I don't like the fake cheeriness of the employees. And before you start howling at me, I realize that you have to be fake happy at work, but this is different than, say, a fake happy server at a restaurant. There's a manic energy to most of gamestop's employees that I've seen at many locations, and I distrust it. It's like the gaming equivalent of a bro or something; bouncing around, super pumped about the million things they are trying to tell me that I don't care about, taking your repeated "no thanks" in stride while smoothly transitioning into trying to get you to buy something else. I hate how they try to upsell you on everything, even when it's clear that you just want the game that you are holding in your hand. In fact, the one or two times a year I have to go in there, I always lead with, "Hey, how's it going, I just want this game," or something similar, and it never works. "Do you want insurance?" "Do you want to preorder X or Y?" "Are you sure?" "We're having an 10% off sale on X today, did you want to look around?" No. No, I don't want to look around, I want this game. Read the friggin room, dude.

Another reason I do not like gamestop is the scummy little money making system they have set up. As reported by Kotaku, it goes like this:

The program, called “Circle of Life,” gives each GameStop store different percentage quotas for 1) pre-orders; 2) reward card subscriptions; 3) used game sales; and 4) game trade-ins. Each of these quotas is based on the store’s total transactions. Pre-orders and reward cards subscriptions are based on the number of transactions, while used game sales and trade-ins are based on the total dollar value of transactions. If a store’s quota for used game sales is 30%, and the store sells $1,000 worth of merchandise, GameStop expects at least $300 of that merchandise to be pre-owned. So if someone walks into GameStop and picks up, say, a brand new copy of Yakuza 0 without 1) pre-ordering another game, 2) subscribing for a new rewards card, 3) buying a used game, or 4) trading in some games to help pay for it, then the transaction will knock down all four percentages.

All this lends itself to the used car feeling, where they push and push instead of just appreciating that you are spending money at their store. It is infuriating. It's a "We got em where we want em, now how else can we squeeze money out of them?" mentality that drives me insane. I don't shop there. I won't trade games in there, and I won't take advantage of their shitty little "promotions". If you do, that's fine. Do your thing. But for me, I'd rather get reasonable prices selling used games on Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, even Ebay, than deal with these snakes.


So it made my day today when GameStop announced the resignation of chief executive officer Michael K. Mauler, who left the company “for personal reasons, effective immediately.” Mauler served as the company's CEO for almost no time at all, beginning in February 2018. 

It pleases me that this may make the company lose money. It makes me happy this throws their little system into some amount of chaos. In the meatime, Daniel A. DeMatteo, executive chairman of the board of directors for GameStop, will serve as interim CEO. The company has reported that it expects sales to be flat or down in 2018.

Take that Gamestop. I don't like you, and I hope the bad things happen to you, and only you.

Love, DLH.

*Not true