GameStop

YouTube personality and former GameStop employee, CAMELOT331, gets fired because GameStop just can’t stop doing evil things

I have seen many wild things happen in the games industry. Every field of business has its ups and downs but I would argue very few could be as topsy-turvy as the games industry. One of the key aspects of this is how predicated on the combination of new ideas and technology to push the medium forward as an entertainment platform. Those two ideas may produce more convenient avenues for a consumer to access the things they want but it can leave more brick and mortar institutions in the dust.

This brings me to my topic today. GameStop. A place that I did not regularly associate with negativity. Sure, I had my problems with my local three GameStop stores. I just chalked it up to the benign idiocy of a bad retail worker. Someone who just did not care about their job or the customer's satisfaction. That was until a few months ago in my recommended feed on YouTube the content creator Camelot331 (Cody) a former store manager appeared with a video about GameStop.

Naturally, this piqued my curiosity and I watched it. Then I watched a few more videos and everything he spoke about I could confirm through my own experiences. The random charges on my receipts, being followed around a store hounded, the never having new games, allocating seventy percent of store space for collectibles. I offhandedly mentioned to a new manager of the nearest store to me that I heard many employees at other GameStop locations were under a lot of because management rides them so hard to get used sales and preorders. He quickly dismissed my statement by replying with “Those are just loser former sales associates who are disgruntled because of the hard to work instead of standing around.” I was rather shocked by the reply, but he seemed agitated to begin with, so I just quietly completed my purchase and left. He did not say thank you or have a nice day.

At this point, the situation was a person just telling his horror stories about the eleven years working in this retail store solely for the purposes of entertainment. As his channel grew eventually, GameStop heard about it. On June 22^nd, 2019 Cody uploaded a video. In the video, he begins with a former colleague from his old district called him on the phone and told him about the district manager and retail director coming to that store and questioning him in the back room. The question was if he had been in contact with Cody. Something that seemed to of happened to other associates in that area. His initial fear was that GameStop was going to pursue some type of legal attack on him. As he called around to other managers he uncovered GameStop is actually putting a contingency where if any associate has talked to him they are to be terminated from the company. Unfortunately, many states have laws where you can fire someone for any reason and not have any legal repercussions. This just happens to be one of those states.

From there the community updates were frequent. In his July 10^th video, he recapped everything that had happened giving us the full story. After Cody left GameStop after an unceremonious parting due to the ineptitude of GameStop as a company, he began working at a smaller company. He did not state the company's name and for legal reasons, it is probably best left out as of right now. It all seemed to be going well for him. His team was the top sales earners that year, the company was growing, and his YouTube had taken off. Then he is pulled into a meeting with HR early on a Monday morning. They make mention of knowing about his channel how it may be a liability for them. Already surmising they are most likely going to fire him he patiently waited over the 4^th of July holiday weekend. His assumption was correct and he was fired. Through a phone call, his former boss let slip “Well yeah, looks like one of your buddies from GameStop called our HR department and let ‘em know.”

As far as abhorrent business practices go, on top of all the dishonest and greedy things, GameStop has done over the years. Hounding someone who dared to speak about some of these things. Subjects and topics that are an open secret and most people know about. Just because he gains a little bit of a voice on the internet through YouTube. GameStop thought it has the right to put someone out of a job, to threaten their livelihood and harass another company just because they do not like having their dirty laundry exposed and validated by someone who gave eleven years to the company.

In summery GameStop is evil and failing as a company. They have been on a steady decline since 2016 with the rise of digital distribution and other competing companies offering better value purchases. We will have an interview with Camelot331 soon and we will append it to this article in the future so be sure to check back for that. Follow Cody on Twitter and check out his YouTube channel.