Topic: Game Store Experiences

The only problem I've ever had are their extremely unreasonable prices. I rarely ever go there. I almost always buy my games from Amazon.

Never really had a problem with Gamestop. The only strange thing was recently when I bought Rayman Legends for Wii U. The guy gave me a strange look for like 2 seconds and then asked "Do you have a PS3?" I said "yeah", and then he just said "okay" and then I paid for the game and everything else went normally.

Don't know why he just brought up PS3 for no reason...

I just don't. I have my trusted online sources, which are few. I prefer to have it in my hand the moment I pay for it, which is contradictory of online shopping. It sucks that in person shopping is dying, only because I prefer it. I'll adjust to online shopping as I need to, but reluctantly. The shopping sites I do trust don't deal with games though, so I may have to find one that does soon.

PS: Amazon is the company that brought in a bunch of worthless Californian idiots to Seattle as well, so there is some bad blood there.

GameStop experiences always go from bad (with a jerk employee) to decent (cool manager). If the employees aren't jerks, the event is unremarkable.

2009: I was denied a B2G1 deal for reasons unknown (seriously, thinking about this one baffles me) so I asked the manager and he gave me B1G1
2012: I was denied a sale price for Mario Kart, so the manager gave me 50% off.

Also, Best Buy employees are consistently cool about price matches. Professor Layton for $20 mere days after launch.

I've had some great experiences with Gamestop, but on the flipside, I've had some terrible experiences with Gamestop. Hands-down the worst experience I had there was buying BIT.TRIP COMPLETE. It took me three weeks to get buy it from them. I visited the closest Gamestop to my house, which, according to their website, had a copy of the game. I walked in and asked an employee if they had it. He turned around a got BIT.TRIP SAGA out from behind the counter. There's something about Gamestops in my area, because they always pull out the first game with a name similar to what you ask for. So I corrected him and told him the game I was looking for was BIT.TRIP COMPLETE, which was for the Wii. Turns out they didn't have it. A few days later, my dad drove me to the next closest Gamestop, which was supposed to have two copies of the game. So, I asked the clerk about it, this time a woman. She said there were no copies left, but they would make a reservation for it. About a week later, my dad gets a call that they had mistaken BIT.TRIP COMPLETE for BIT.TRIP SAGA and the game was there the last time we visited. So, after three weeks, I finally get the game. As what I can only assume to be compensation, they put every sticker they could afford to on the box. To make a long story short, a gave a junk game of mine that case and exchanged the cover art and manual into an alternate case.

By far the best experience I've had with Gamestop involved buying Tales of the Abyss. I simply walked in, asked the employee, waited for one minute while he found a sealed copy, talked a bit about games, registered a rewards card, and walked out. It was just a good experience. The employee was passionate about his job, games, and was just nice. Funny enough that was one of the last times I ever went to Gamestop.

Nothing too extreme. I had a copy of Aliens: Colonial Marines on preorder (ugh) and the manager kept insisting I get it anyway even though bad reviews were coming in. Took a long time to convince him I wasn't interested anymore and that there was no way I'd buy it.

When I went in for Pikmin 3, I asked if they had any copies in stock and the employee put his ID in his mouth and started chewing on it while he was talking to me. That was kinda strange.

Not Gamestop, but I've been to a few stores where the owners make sexist remarks or brag about ripping people off.

My biggest complaint with Gamestop has always been the people who shop there. The dudebro buying Call Of Maddenfield, the mother with fifteen kids running around the store, etc. I miss the import stores I used to go to as a kid. Only a few left around where I am.

Haven't gone into a game store for years now, but I haven't had too many bad experiences. But as others have mentioned, the selling used games as new really does not sit well with me. Probably would not buy from GameStop again though, after the "Vintage" titles thing.

The "Vintage" title thing must be region exclusive, I got Metroid Trime Trilogy this month (or last month..?) for €7.99 used!

One good thing about Seattle, the game store shoppers are not all that annoying. While they do tend to be idiots and dumb jocks posing as gamers, buying Call of Dummies, they also know not to mess with the real gamers here, we run this world, after all.

One other bad experience I had was when I was in the store browsing the 3DS section and the clerk asks, "Got a 3DS?"
I say, "Yeah," and he replies, "Oh, well you need a case for it so it doesn't get scratched," and proceeds to show me a black Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D case. It looks neat, and I think my brother might like it. I tell my brother and he decides to buy it (so far, everything is fine and dandy).
In the car, we notice on the back of the case that there is a green version of the case with a different picture on it available as an alternative to purchase. My brother liked it way better, so he went back in to return the black one and get a green one.
The guy says, "Oh, we don't have any green." Shrugging, my brother proceeds to ask for a refund on the black one. "Oh, well they don't even have the green one in Canada," says the guy, "You can only get it in the US."
Little does he know we are going to the US in exactly two days on vacation. My brother says, "That's fine, we're going there anyways," and asks him a third time to return the case.
Now the guy says, "Actually, I don't even know if they have it there, I would just stick with the black one." At this point I step in (being the older brother) and say, "Hey man, he wants to return the case, let him return the case!"
The guy looks at me and says, "It's none of your business," and I stare at him and say, "Yeah, it is. Now give him his refund or I want to talk to a manager."
Finally, the guy scans the case and gives him his money back, muttering under his breath the whole time.

The funniest part is, the next day we found the case... At a different EB Games near my house IN CANADA. I knew that guy was lying, why would he lie to a 13 year old kid like that (my brother was 13 at the time, I was... 16? I believe this was two years ago, so that sounds correct)?

I haven't had any overtly bad experiences with Gamestop, but just going there is a pretty bad experience. Trading in games there is a joke. Why do I only get $1.50 when I see the exact same game on the shelf for $35.00? Once I traded in about 25 games there during a promotion where you got double the trade in value and it only ended up being about $100 worth. And don't even get me started on the flipping stickers they put on everything, I absolutely hate that.

Suffice it to say, I buy my used games online now.

If you have a question about Call of Duty or GTA V or Tomb Raider or the Last of Us or any other game with an M-Rating, GameStop can definitely help you out.

If you go in there with a question about a Nintendo game, they have no clue what you are talking about.

^FACT!!

Wow. 0_0 Sorry to hear about some of your guys experiences. If anything like that happened to me while I went there, I would definetly not go back there again. I will keep that stuff in mind next time I go there. I don't ever buy used games there, but it does irk me a little that I'll go to buy a game, and the clerk will say "Oh, looks like this is the last one we have" and give me the open display case (with real coverart and manuals).

As far as Amazon is concerned, I always make sure I buy from Amazon themselves and never from any vendors on there. The only problems I had with them is when I bought Hyrule Historia, the box wasn't even sealed, but the book was untouched, in mint condition, and in the shrink wrap. I also ordered 5 books at a time from there and they were all just thrown in a box with no packing material or invoice. I guess they figured the books fit well enough in the box that they wouldn't slide around.

Yeah Gamestop would be nice if they actually catered to players. I love how there slogan is Power to the Players when it should be Power to Corporate Greed.

Yes I understand that they are a business and they are there to make money but wouldn't it get them more money if they would hire friendly people who know about games and quit trying to lie, cheat and steal just to make a sale? If its an open copy sell it at a used price like you would give me if I gave you an open copy. Honestly if they would do that instead of trying to convince me that it's new I would buy it no questions ask. But standing there and telling me that oh its new blah blah blah like I am some kind of idiot. That's what gets me. But I guess they are use to dealing with kids who don't know better or really don't care.

Erm, hate to step on your "hate all things capitalism" notion, but no game company likes the trade of used games, especially Microsoft and Sony. Nintendo still seems to support used games, cartridges encourage the trading of games. Gamestop is huge on used games, it's their biggest portion of their profit, actually. Used games only benefit the small store front, like Gamestop, and the gamers. Also, as stated many times, employee attitude is locale dependent, perhaps your city just needs to adjust all their employees' attitudes.

As long as I get the game (and it works) and the manuals, etc. I have no problem with this.

Better question is why do clothing stores sell unsealed stuff as "new"?

@ScroogeMcLz I don't buy clothes unless they are shrink wrapped

I don't think I've bought a game in a physical store since 2002. Here in the UK at least, no physical store is ever cheaper than online, plus with online you usually get your game the day before release, or sometimes a few days early.

Worst game store experience ever: I went to Gamestop so already you know things are going to be bad. I bought Red Dead Redemption, Bayonetta, and FF13, I always buy my games new (especially if they're discs) because I've had bad experiences with games not working and my closest Gamestop is a 30 minute drive from my home. Well I guess Gamestop employees have a quota of used games they have to sell or something because the guy would just keep telling me to buy the used one instead of the new ones and I kept telling him no and he kept pushing the used games on me and you could see it on his face that he was trying so desperately to sell the used versions on me but I wouldn't buy them. He pulled out the used games so I would look at them and I still said no. He then went on about how I could save more money (like $10 really) and he's all like "come on just buy them guy" and I snapped and I yelled at him in front of everybody at the store and people were staring and he's all like "alright man calm down I'm just trying to help you save some money and if these games don't work you can always return them" that made me even more angry and I told him I'd waste even more money on the gas driving back to return the damn games. Things got a little quiet after that and he packed my games in the bag and I just yanked it from his hand and left. Anyways for some weird reason there's 2 gamestops at my mall like a 1 minute walk away from each other so now I go to the next Gamestop.

With Gamestop, there are good stores and bad stores. And of course when someone goes to a bad store, they assume that all Gamestops are bad. Just human nature I guess...