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Solice Kirsk posted:I'm gonna assume opening it up to private equity funding is what started loving it up. Things can get lovely real quick for businesses when they have to start addressing shareholder expectations/answering to a board. The company was fine before PE idiots took over
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Feb 19, 2020 17:58
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FlamingLiberal posted:Yes that is when the problems started That second sentence could be a thread title.
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Feb 19, 2020 18:36
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FilthyImp posted:They mucked with payouts and percentages a while back and it takes just the slightest nudge for people to flee to a competitor platform. Patreon dgaf about 18+ content (most of their most profitable accounts are 18+) the problem is PayPal and credit card processors have a huge problem with certain semi-legal themes (anything even remotely related to the glut of fake incest porn for example) and force patreon to take action against those creators.
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Feb 19, 2020 18:40
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Basticle posted:Patreon dgaf about 18+ content (most of their most profitable accounts are 18+) the problem is PayPal and credit card processors have a huge problem with certain semi-legal themes (anything even remotely related to the glut of fake incest porn for example) and force patreon to take action against those creators. Same thing happened with FetLife a year or two ago. The credit card companies basically gave them a list of demands and that's when the groups containing snuff, animal cruelty, etc started disappearing.
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Feb 19, 2020 18:44
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Feb 19, 2020 18:50
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Patreon moved all their payment processing overseas to avoid a lot of that, but at the same time cleaned up their content to keep the problem from happening again. 'Cleaned up' is a relative term, but it gives people their family/wolfpack friendly furry art and keeps Lowtax up-to-date on his spine loan.
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Feb 19, 2020 18:51
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Pope Corky the IX posted:Same thing happened with FetLife a year or two ago. The credit card companies basically gave them a list of demands and that's when the groups containing snuff, animal cruelty, etc started disappearing. That seems good actually.
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Feb 19, 2020 19:53
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Oh, absolutely. Just pointing out that it's the same situation. It was fascinating watching people twist themselves into knots trying to explain why it was wrong and how they were going to sue over no longer having access to pictures and videos of a barefoot woman stomping a kitten to death.
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Feb 19, 2020 19:56
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Patreon is weirdly lovely to use, as a patron (and I've heard bad things from creators). As far as I can tell there's no option to search through a creator's posts, or have them all listed by title or some other easy to search method. So you just have to hope the creator tagged them all really well (or, like, at all) because otherwise the only option is to scroll through all of them chronologically.
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Feb 19, 2020 21:21
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Is there going to be a point where there's like an investigation of private equity companies tanking literally everything for profit? Or is it just forever "Capitalism, bitch"
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Feb 19, 2020 21:46
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The short answer is no. They bought the company. It's their's to save or strip to the bone. Then again not every private equity company is bad. Dell went public to private and back to public. Burger King and Staples did the same. Other companies get bought out by PE and never go public again like Heinz or Hilton.
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Feb 19, 2020 22:23
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They can definitely do some lovely stuff. A local chain got bought out by private equity, stripmined over the course of 5-10 years, then eventually had to file bankruptcy and the pension fund got left holding the bag. The equity firm made money on the deal, overall.
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Feb 19, 2020 22:54
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vyst posted:Is there going to be a point where there's like an investigation of private equity companies tanking literally everything for profit? Or is it just forever "Capitalism, bitch" Whenever they stop being the US government (never)
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Feb 19, 2020 23:26
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Krispy Wafer posted:The short answer is no. They bought the company. It's their's to save or strip to the bone. Pretty sure everyone agrees that the quality of food goes to poo poo as soon as BK's private equity firm buys them.
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Feb 19, 2020 23:31
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The Moon Monster posted:Patreon is weirdly lovely to use, as a patron (and I've heard bad things from creators). As far as I can tell there's no option to search through a creator's posts, or have them all listed by title or some other easy to search method. So you just have to hope the creator tagged them all really well (or, like, at all) because otherwise the only option is to scroll through all of them chronologically.
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Feb 20, 2020 00:12
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https://twitter.com/Polygon/status/1230122399158472706?s=20
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Feb 20, 2020 00:26
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Slightly off the point but I laughed when I saw the phrase "gaming culture" being used unironically in that article. Gaming culture? Is that where you freely shout slurs, neglect your personal hygiene, eat lovely "food", and see women as poor versions of sex dolls?
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Feb 20, 2020 00:37
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I've been inside a gamestop 2 or 3 times in the last 5 years. Each time, I was the only person there except for one lonely soul who works there.
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Feb 20, 2020 00:43
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Weatherman posted:Slightly off the point but I laughed when I saw the phrase "gaming culture" being used unironically in that article. Gaming culture? Is that where you freely shout slurs, neglect your personal hygiene, eat lovely "food", and see women as poor versions of sex dolls? No, it means they now sell games AND Funko Pops.
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Feb 20, 2020 00:49
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I go in for Pokemon codes and it's usually pretty crowded, but I'm going after work so maybe that is prime time or something.
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Feb 20, 2020 00:50
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Last time I was in there there was a bunch of teenagers wandering around bored, they asked a few questions, then left with out buying anything. I did re up my subscription to Game Informer, and am curious to see if I wasted 20 bucks.
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Feb 20, 2020 01:23
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Our local Gamestop pretty much always has people in it. I suspect that's because there's only two in the area, and many people do not have good access to the internet making moving solely to digital unfeasible for many here. I won't be surprised if Gamestop goes under, but I will be a bit sad, because I still get the vast majority of my games as physical copies, and I also like going in and browsing the used games.
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Feb 20, 2020 01:59
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AngryRobotsInc posted:Our local Gamestop pretty much always has people in it. I suspect that's because there's only two in the area, and many people do not have good access to the internet making moving solely to digital unfeasible for many here. I won't be surprised if Gamestop goes under, but I will be a bit sad, because I still get the vast majority of my games as physical copies, and I also like going in and browsing the used games. Haven't been in a Gamestop in eons. Whatever they offer I can usually find at Walmart, Target or on Amazon if I feel like waiting on shipping.
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Feb 20, 2020 08:16
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Most big stores down under have phased out their video game departments, including Target and Kmart. Mind you, Kmart in particular seems to have remodelled all its stores to be impossible to find anything at all. Big W is still pretty comprehensive though, and has some decent deals. (Hell, I bought my Switch from there) Much like video rental stores, physical video game stores will probably cling on in areas where people still buy them.
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Feb 20, 2020 09:00
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I wonder how many of those GameStop closures are also a result of them being clustered together so closely. There were three locations near me, all within a 5-10 minute drive, with two being down the street from one another. It was bewildering.
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Feb 20, 2020 10:29
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Wasn’t that a relic of them buying out Funcoland?
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Feb 20, 2020 11:29
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Balliver Shagnasty posted:Haven't been in a Gamestop in eons. Whatever they offer I can usually find at Walmart, Target or on Amazon if I feel like waiting on shipping. I haven't been in our local Target much, but our Gamestop has a much wider selection than Walmart, at least. I'll give Amazon, but I like to just browse sometimes.
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Feb 20, 2020 13:41
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Icon Of Sin posted:Wasn’t that a relic of them buying out Funcoland? You would think, but they'd open new stores if they could secure good rent deals. In my area, there was one inside a mall, one across the street from the mall, and one a mile away from the mall. The one a mile away from the mall closed when rent went up. A year later, they opened a new location across the street from there. Only one of those stores is open now.
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Feb 20, 2020 13:45
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We had no Funcolands. We did have EB stores, but not a lot (and only in malls). We still have Gamestops every 5 miles. They probably have algorithms that say exactly how far an annoyed parent will drive their 12 year old to get a game on a weeknight and space stores out that way.
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Feb 20, 2020 13:51
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Detective No. 27 posted:You would think, but they'd open new stores if they could secure good rent deals. In my area, there was one inside a mall, one across the street from the mall, and one a mile away from the mall. The one a mile away from the mall closed when rent went up. A year later, they opened a new location across the street from there. Only one of those stores is open now. In my experience, they seem to do much better in areas like where I live. Somewhat lower population, less locations overall. We only have two in the city itself, and most people who are buying video games locally in the surrounding counties shop there if they're not buying online. The next closest are in the two cities each about an hour away to the north and southish, or a town about the same distance to the east. When they're jammed in like they were where I lived before (there was a similar 'one in the mall, one across the street from the mall' situation), each store sees much less traffic. Where here, they seem to do at least decent business.
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Feb 20, 2020 13:55
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I assume that when Gamestop finally dies then some mom and pop stores will come back and fill in the void for those areas with poo poo broadband. It's the retail circle of life I guess.
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Feb 20, 2020 15:50
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My company got bought by PE and you will see us in this thread soon enough. Remember, kids. VC > PE.
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Feb 20, 2020 16:03
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Croatoan posted:I assume that when Gamestop finally dies then some mom and pop stores will come back and fill in the void for those areas with poo poo broadband. It's the retail circle of life I guess. Likely, in areas that can support them. It's a different beast entirely, but it's interesting to see the lingering effects of Walmarts opening in rural areas, and driving out the local businesses. And then closing. (I'm not comparing this situation to Gamestop, it just reminded me). Those areas get hit even worse if their Walmart closes, since it often is one of the biggest employers in the area before that. The small local business often don't come back after that, because the population's income just can't support them anymore.
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Feb 20, 2020 16:08
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Mom and pop gamestores that attempt to sell new stock generally fail pretty hard because those profit margins are razor thin and they want stores to buy in much larger numbers than a mom and pop can handle. Retro game stores are doing pretty well for now though.
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Feb 20, 2020 16:20
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GolfHole posted:My company got bought by PE and you will see us in this thread soon enough. Work for a subsidy of a subsidy of Berkshire Hathaway. I'm sure my parent company will be fine, mine, not so much, but  I can safely say that the CEO of my parent company is a moron who insists that everyone globally must hear him talk quarterly
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Feb 20, 2020 16:54
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Yeah the margins on new games and consoles is non-existent, when I worked at Canadian EB Games like ten years ago there was always a massive push for used because that's where they made money.
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Feb 20, 2020 18:18
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I will always enjoy that one time all my friends pre-ordered Original World of Warcraft at EB Games, I didn't, went in and asked if they had a copy, they didn't. Walked across the street to a local Danish Electronics store, they had around ten copies left, turns out that pre-orders doesn't work in countries were the local shops don't give a poo poo. It did mean getting the Horde box, which I obviously threw out years ago. The Gamestop stores in Denmark now, are just full of used console games and random gaming related crap.
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Feb 20, 2020 22:13
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Croatoan posted:I assume that when Gamestop finally dies then some mom and pop stores will come back and fill in the void for those areas with poo poo broadband. It's the retail circle of life I guess. Before this recent set of closures, the last gamestops that closed locally were replaced by either mom and pop game stores or like gaming cafes and neither made it two years.
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Feb 20, 2020 23:55
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Game stores are like restaurants. There's always some fool who is positive he or she can make it work. We will always have game stores.
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Feb 21, 2020 00:03
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Detective No. 27 posted:Mom and pop gamestores that attempt to sell new stock generally fail pretty hard because those profit margins are razor thin and they want stores to buy in much larger numbers than a mom and pop can handle. Retro game stores are doing pretty well for now though. You must have some extremely well managed Retro stores in your area because they've been dropping like flies in mine. So far its been the poorly run messy "here's your paycheck but you can't cash it until Saturday" types that have folded. One briefly tried to reinvent as a pawn shop before disappearing. The ones that are hanging on don't really seem to have their stock cycle over very well as if people aren't trading into them as much anymore. And another thing with mom and pops game shops are frequently dicked over on distribution for new stock. Many won't be able to get it or will get it later than the big box stores so they miss out on the launch day sales.
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Feb 21, 2020 00:15
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