Camelot331, a Youtuber who has previously leaked Gamestop layoffs via an unknown source, just uploaded a video claiming that Gamestop is shutting down almost completely.
Camelot explains that the the next massive lay-off for the company is being called "Phase 3", where "Phase 1" was the initial regional manager lay-off at the beginning of August and "Phase 2" was the dismissal of over 100 corporate employees, including almost the entire senior editorial staff of Game informer. Now, "Phase 3" will see the shut down of almost every Gamestop retail location across the country.
Camelot explains that at a recent annual manager's conference, managers were told that in order to "save the company", a few retail locations would be transitioned into retro gaming and tabletop gaming stores, while the rest would be shut down. The news was extremely distressing to the managers, according to Camelot: "One guy told me that his district manager basically locked himself in his office and just doesn't talk to anybody."
Now, according to Camelot, district managers are required to create a list of employees that they "desire to keep" after the transition, that are "talented enough" to stay past Phase 3.
Gamestop operates 4,400 store in the U.S. and according to Camelot, by the end of fiscal quarter 4, over half of those stores will be permanently closed. The remaining 2,000 stores will be re-imagined as table-top/retro-gaming stores. The less profitable stores will be the first to be eliminated, and Camelot believes entire districts will be completely shut down.
Camelot goes on to hypothesize that regional managers will be eliminated all together, as the district manager position will be more than enough to cover the remaining store. He claims that phase 3 has been corroborated by 5 different Gamestop employees.
hardly surprising if true, GameStop has had their sales fucked by digital distribution and Amazon
Nathaniel Phillips
Physicalchads, where will you be getting your games from now? For me, it's Amazon. I haven't bought from Gamestop in like two years, so this won't be a big change for me.
Wyatt Walker
why didn't they think of selling tabletop games earlier? bring two nerd communities into the same place. would have turned out better than selling toys for pre-schoolers.
Michael Sullivan
as annoying as it is, it's the last place i still get that book store, record store, video store hang out vibe.
they should of turned them into hangouts, so people go there to hang out and fuck around. Ahh well
Charles Anderson
I watched that Camelot video. Not gonna lie it's shitty how they can fire someone over literally anything because they get paid a lot due to tenure. Isn't that completely illegal or only in burgerland?
Chase Foster
Best buy
Leo Hernandez
>giving money to the amazon jew cyкa
Jordan Phillips
I bought the game protection for once when I picked up Astral Chain because I felt bad at how screwed the pretty cool store guy is, he can have a tiny pad to his numbers
Jose Gutierrez
Burger here, there is no protection, no defense, no back up, no nothing. If they want to fire you you re fired
Joseph Garcia
meanwhile actual gaming hang-out places are making bank off Korean nerds while Gamestop is selling plushies.
Jordan Ross
You'd think they'd be making bank on used games.
Elijah Cook
For all the shit that the UK has it makes me glad I can't be fired without good reason.
Carson Hughes
Best Buy, they ship with UPS and have free release date shipping on most titles. Unless you have Prime, Amazon charges for release date shipping and have shipped with USPS for years for me.
Adam Nguyen
Walmart and Amazon recently started selling some new releases for 50 dollars just as an extra "fuck you" to GS
Connor Williams
Amazon now operates its own delivery service, which manages to be actually less reliable than USPS
Elijah Ross
I worked there roughly one year ago to this day before I moved to a different college a few weeks ago and I like to imagine I single handed my brought the company down.
William Perez
Good. Fuck Gamestop.
Wonder what they're gonna do with all the used games?
tl:dr version; the only reason Gamestop stock saw any rise from it's all time lows last month is because Michael Burry bought a load of stock. Judging by his lack of concern on how Gamestop is going to transition over the next 5-10 years, it seems he is focused on the cash that can be generated - and wrung out - from the business over the next several years and then bail.
Ayden White
Gamestop's biggest mistake was stopping the sale of older generation games. Funcoland had the right idea. I used to be able to walk in a buy a few NES games, a handful of PSX games, and a brand new PS2 game.
