GameStop has a robbery problem and employees want change
At least 12 GameStop stores in the southern California area were targeted in armed robberies in early February, with thieves seeking out expensive gaming consoles that were in limited supply in previous years — specifically the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The same week, three GameStop stores were broken into or robbed in Memphis, Tennessee — an area that was hit around the holidays, too.
Nearly 30 GameStop stores across the United States were robbed in just over the past three months, based on press reports. It’s a fraction of GameStop’s roughly 3,000 stores in the U.S., but some GameStop workers think it’s a trend — and that GameStop needs to step in.
The company is offering a $5,000 reward for information about the robberies in California, GameStop loss prevention boss Alan Fagergren told Los Angeles’ local Fox affiliate following the California robberies. But one thing GameStop can do to protect its employees, workers say, is to stop staffing stores with single coverage, especially at night.
For this report, we spoke with five GameStop employees from across the country, and heard a shared concern for safety. (Current and former GameStop workers that spoke to Polygon have been granted anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.) On a GameStop subreddit, more employees shared those concerns. According to these employees, the robberies have GameStop workers on edge, and some employees blame policies like the corporate cost-cutting measure of having a single person cover an entire store. (Not all stores have one person on at a time at all times, but many do, according to workers Polygon spoke to.)
GameStop’s profit has decreased over the past few years, but the company still reported a profit of
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