As a fan of both video games and trading cards, I heard some pretty devastating news about GameStop earlier today. It only affects a small portion of shoppers, but combined with everything else that’s been going on the past few months, it’s not looking all that good for GameStop. Honestly, it hasn’t looked good for GameStop in a long time. The company had its ups and downs over the past few years, but always came up with some new gimmicks to turn things around. But things may not recover this time.
So what happened now? There’s been a new rule regarding trading cards sold by Topps/Fanatics. This includes Baseball, basketball, and football cards, but also certain Non-sports cards like the Disney ones. Over the past two years, GameStop began working with Fanatics more, and they created a very popular space for buying cards. Anybody with a Pro Membership would get 5% off all card purchases, earn points for buying cards, spend points on cards, and could use their $5 monthly coupon to buy cards.
As of this month, those perks no longer apply, and this change is being enforced directly by Fanatics. If you’ve ever shopped at GameStop, you know that their Pro Membership is something that workers constantly try to sell to you like their lives depend on it. This new benefit got a lot of people to sign up for the membership. But now it’s a deterrent for buying cards at GameStop. Many locations limit or outright stop you from buying cards if you don’t have a membership, but the membership no longer has a benefit for buying cards.
Many collectors have already posted on social media that they’re cancelling their memberships. Getting a yearly membership and then losing access to the discounts is one thing, but putting the ability to pay retail price for cards behind a paywall is a new level of greed. All those collectors that GameStop worked so hard to convert into memberships will begin to walk out on them. But that’s just one of the issues plaguing GameStop and it’s now broken membership.
The shift to digital media that Sony and Microsoft are actively pushing for will also hurt both GameStop and the membership. Sony wants to stop making physical games, but physical games is kind of the whole point of the Pro Membership. It’s not going to be felt now, but in a few years when physical games start getting phased out, it will be catastrophic for GameStop. Let’s look at Grand Theft Auto VI as an example. Let’s be real, nobody will walk into GameStop to buy a digital copy.
GameStop will lose foot traffic from people buying a new physical copy of the game and then they’ll lose even more foot traffic since gamers won’t be able to come in to buy cheaper pre-owned copies. But the loss of foot traffic won’t hurt as much as the loss of their precious membership numbers. People won’t be able to use their $5 monthly reward. They won’t be able to get their 5% discount on pre-owned products. Will people even trade in their games if all they can use credit for will be outdated games and Funko pops?
The trading card benefit is gone now and the physical benefit will be gone within a year or two. They already nuked Game Informer, which caused lots of people to leave in the past. GameStop will need to do a complete restructure of their membership if they want people to keep joining, but will there even be a point by this time next year?