[HN Gopher] Gaming the system: How GameStop stock surged
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Gaming the system: How GameStop stock surged
Author : alexrustic
Score : 30 points
Date : 2021-01-19 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| 3001 wrote:
| People still don't get this. BLM protests, Capitol riots and now
| GameStop short squeeze. Social Media orchestrated historical
| events works and will continue to in the future. Dismissing or
| betting against them is asking for pain.
| H8crilA wrote:
| At least in terms of the capital markets we know this isn't
| really unique to our times. The roaring 20s bubble was in part
| attributable to the invention of radio and the ticker tape -
| those things are mass media as well. The scale may be unique,
| let's take account after it's over :)
| syntaxing wrote:
| One of those weird Keysian effect that blows my mind. Everyone is
| just gambling at this rate which is historically terrible for the
| economy in the long term.
| temp0826 wrote:
| First guess with only reading the title: they got Battletoads in
| stock?!
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Most people don't realize this but GameStop was actually very bad
| for console game developers. Games were often resold, with each
| time no revenue going to the developer. I worked on a popular
| Xbox / PS3 game that was resold like 7-9 times on average. Our
| marketing people figured that GameStop made a lot more money on
| the game than the developer.
|
| Why is that bad? Big console games started to need to be really
| long, because if you could finish them in a week you would lose a
| ton of sales to retail. That's why you started to see games where
| you had to wander around, grind, play through a level backwards,
| chase achievements. It also caused an emphasis on in game
| purchases (in console games) and online play. It just got a lot
| harder to make a short single player game on console.
|
| A lot of those problems go away as console games are sold in a
| digital store.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Same problem with libraries in my opinion.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I am not making a moral judgement, I am saying that the shape
| of the business affects the quality and the style of the art.
|
| Movie theaters are dying and it seems like they may be
| replaced by streaming services like Netflix. The truth is,
| for all streamers pay they probably won't end up paying as
| much as theaters. And it is not clear any of them currently
| make money. What if the model that really makes money is
| YouTube, and a lot of classic expensive movies are going to
| be replaced with mediocre user generated content that is
| extremely profitable to stream? That may sound crazy, but
| think what happened to radio?
|
| I am not seriously arguing that I know what will happen, but
| you just have to understand that when there is a good
| buisiness for high quality, you tend to get quality.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Most people don't realize this but GameStop was actually very
| bad for console game developers. Games were often resold, with
| each time no revenue going to the developer. I worked on a
| popular Xbox / PS3 game that was resold like 7-9 times on
| average. Our marketing people figured that GameStop made a lot
| more money on the game than the developer.
|
| I'm more willing to pay $X for a game if I know I can probably
| sell it for $Y when I don't want it anymore. Digital store
| games don't have the same value for me, I can't sell the games
| later, and depending on the system, might have a big hassle
| transferring them to a different system if/when the one I have
| goes south.
|
| Book publishers (and authors) don't get anything when I buy
| from a used bookstore, or borrow a book from a friend either.
| Neither does a cookware manufacturer get anything if I buy used
| pots and pans from a thrift shop.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Right, but in that model you got a couple dollars, game stop
| gets like 5x and the developer loses a sale that would be
| 10-20x.
|
| Books cost tens of thousands of dollars to make and games
| cost tens of millions. There would be no video game business
| like the one we know if they were sold the same way as books.
| Think about it a second-- your PlayStation game is sold on a
| piece of media that is proprietary. Are your books sold on
| proprietary paper made specially difficult to copy?
| toast0 wrote:
| Gamestop certainly wouldn't pay enough for me to sell to
| them; I'd rather sell or give to a friend, or sell on a
| marketplace for somewhere between Gamestop's buy and sell
| prices. Most of the independent used game shops have
| tighter spreads as well.
|
| This past year, I bought Animal Crossing for the Switch;
| even though I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it. As
| expected, I didn't like it, but I had a friend who wanted
| it, and I could mail it to them. That's a "lost sale" in
| video game accounting; but if it was tied to my switch, I
| would have never bought it, and my friend wasn't planning
| to buy it, but is thrilled to have it.
|
| A book doesn't need to be intentionally made difficult to
| copy, because in its natural form, it's a lot of effort to
| copy. There's not enough money to be saved by copying a
| book to make it worthwhile, except for maybe textbooks.
|
| Arcade manufacturers don't get a cut of the quarters put
| into a machine either (well, maybe they do for some of the
| games that now need an online connection to run).
| monksy wrote:
| > Most people don't realize this but GameStop was actually very
| bad for console game developers.
|
| And I feel 0 empathy for you. With the digital platform you are
| stripping away ownership rights from the purchaser. From your
| statement I feel that you're whining about missing sales that
| you never could have actually had. Do the 7-9 extra sales
| translate to 7-9x more sales on digital platforms? No.
| mikestew wrote:
| I don't read parent as looking for empathy, but rather
| explaining why "you like grinding? We hope so, because you're
| going to grind for that next $PIECE_OF_CHEESE lest you finish
| the game quickly, turn around and resell it."
| pizza234 wrote:
| Well, if we put things in perspective, there's a paradox
| here.
|
| If we take the case of a game that is resold a few times on
| average (not even 7+ times), users are waiving ownership on
| their own will - they're effectively renting.
|
| In these specific conditions, a hypothetical (digital) game
| rental would actually serve best both the producer and the
| consumers.
|
| Note that I don't make a general statement, but I'm referring
| to this specific case. I'm also not familiar with game
| rental, but at least until a few years ago, I've seen a
| physical shop offering it.
| [deleted]
| ABeeSea wrote:
| This argument is misleading because even if it's not the full
| 7-9, it is certainly greater than 0. We can argue what the
| exact percentage is, but saying there was 0 lost sales is
| just as wrong as saying 7-9 lost sales.
| monksy wrote:
| It is slightly more, yes. However, you're going to have a
| hard time convincing me that it's as significant as they
| claim. The people buying used games don't feel that the
| game is worth risking the new game price. Also, it gives
| them more freedom to sell if they didn't like it.
|
| The digital platform is about locking the user in no matter
| what. No chargebacks, no ownership, etc. Do a charge back
| Sony bans your console and locks you out of the games you
| "purchased". End of.
| hobs wrote:
| The middlemen are just as bad, they'll buy a game for a
| dollar and turn around and sell it for 20, so I dont
| really care either way - steam sales are saving me me
| much more than resales ever paid me back.
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| Is that why games have gotten shorter? I'm from the NES - PS1
| era of gaming where games would regularly take 60+ hours to
| play through.
|
| FFVII is still one of my all time favorites and is a good
| example of that. I think the first real fast game I played
| through was Metal Gear Solid. I'd rent, then buy if I liked it
| back then, and I played through all of Metal Gear Solid in
| something like 2 or 3 days. It was the first game I enjoyed
| that I did not buy, because I beat it while renting it.
| robrtsql wrote:
| It seems to me that you're mostly talking about RPGs. I can't
| think of any NES-PS1 platforming/shooter/action games that
| had 60 hours worth of content.
|
| If you look at today's RPGs, they're still _really long_. It
| is expected that most players who play Persona 5 Royal will
| take over 100 hours to complete it, which is pretty wild
| considering it's not a 'grinding game'--players aren't taking
| that long because they're fighting the same enemies
| repeatedly hoping for a rare item to appear. There really is
| 100 hours' worth of contents.
| decafninja wrote:
| When console games started selling for $59.99 (or more), I
| found it difficult to justify purchasing most single player
| games unless they really were jaw-droppingly amazing because
| the hours to dollars ratio started becoming very low.
|
| Meanwhile a multiplayer game - whether it be a MMORPG or a
| FPS, would net you countless hours of entertainment.
| [deleted]
| TylerE wrote:
| We're obviously remembering different NES games.
|
| The NES games I remember could generally be beaten in no more
| than an hour, if you knew how to actually do it without dying
| 1000 times.
|
| A good warpless speedrun time on Super Mario Brothers is
| about 19 minutes.
|
| If warps are allowed, it's under 5.
|
| Legend of Zelda? 27 minutes
|
| Ninja Gaiden? 12 minutes
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| It's a bit absurd going off of speed runs is a way to
| accurately identify a game's normal play length.
|
| I think all the games I had were 60+ hours, but I just
| liked JRPGs more than most genres.
|
| FFVIII was picked not only because it was one of my
| favorites (FF1 too, SMB3, ...), because the remake today
| has turned it into 3 games, and even then those 3 games
| seem long by today's standards.
| pizza234 wrote:
| To be noted the famous term "Nintendo hard", which
| indeed... doesn't indicate that Nintendo games would be
| typically finished quickly (at least, without
| considerable skill) :-)
|
| Interestingly, based on the Wikipedia page1, the
| historical difficulty of the Nintendo games is quite
| nuanced.
|
| 1=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_hard
| TylerE wrote:
| There's a bit of difference between an NES and as PSX,
| which came out a full 2 generations and 12 years later.
|
| The NES didn't have any way of saving, for instance.
|
| The two have about much in common as a PSX and an Xbox1.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Zelda II the Adventure of Link had a save feature. I
| thought Kirby's dreamland did as well. There were a
| number of games that had save files although of course
| many did not include the needed hardware on their carts.
|
| FWIW, the SNES also had no storage, and saves were in the
| carts. Not until the N64 did Nintendo ship a device with
| fungible, non-cart storage.
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| Most NES games had a way of saving, except the earliest
| NES games.
|
| Most of them had codes you'd type in that was a save
| point. Many had actual save states on the cartridge.
|
| The earlier games got around not having a code by having
| a secret early on the game that was revealed later on in
| the game so you could skip all of the parts you
| previously played.
| TylerE wrote:
| I wouldn't consider codes a save. They often loss state.
|
| Basically just an encoding of "start at level X with Y
| lives". Maybe not even lives.
|
| There were only 54 NES releases with actual, battery
| based saves, out of 716 officially released and licensed
| titles (and heaven knows how many bootlegs).
|
| So, "most" is an overbid.
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| Well, most of the ones I wanted to play at least. ^_^
| dx87 wrote:
| Yep, they were pretty short, and a lot of them had no save
| feature so had to be finished in one sitting (unless your
| parents let you leave it running and just unhook the coax
| cable so they could watch TV). I remember going to a local
| game store that would let you try out used games in the
| store to verify that they worked, and I actually beat a
| game at the store.
| iNerdier wrote:
| You say this as if people shouldn't be able to resell
| information, as packaged in a disc. Does this extend to other
| things, would you want to prohibit used book sales for example,
| or cars from being resold?
|
| The ability to resell books didn't lead to only works the size
| of war and peace being sold...
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I am not saying anyone should of shouldn't be able to sell
| information. I am just saying it affected the business.
|
| Oh btw, the next time you read a non-fiction book with a
| thesis that grabs your attention, but that could probably fit
| into a long essay.. there is probably a book editor that said
| it had to be X number of pages because there isn't a business
| in selling pamphlets.
| gumby wrote:
| This phenomenon affects almost all business books, which,
| even for some very good ones, are typically only a few
| pages long. In an extreme, Crossing the Chasm which
| explains a powerful insght, is basically one diagram.
| brundolf wrote:
| This is a bad-faith reading. The GP was just pointing out one
| non-obvious negative side-effect of having things play out
| the way they used to.
| anonymousab wrote:
| The existence of a second-hand market meaning a few less
| sales for fresh/new/retail product seems very self evident
| though.
| brundolf wrote:
| The way it shaped game design is far from obvious, and
| honestly fascinating
| zdragnar wrote:
| That is not a charitable reading. OP wasn't discussing
| _should_ or _ought_ , merely real effects. Your book analogy
| is flawed, considering that, for the most part, books aren't
| obsoleted when the new console comes out every three years.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Not really comparable. For example, the cost to produce a
| major book release does not scale nearly as quickly as the
| cost of producing a modern AAA video game.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| There is a massive secondary market for cars, and those
| costs scale much higher than producing a AAA video game,
| but you don't see car manufacturers blaming used car lots?
|
| Perhaps the game's price should reflect the cost of
| production, or they should limit the cost of production to
| what's sustainable by sales.
| kungito wrote:
| You always need a car and it depreciates in quality with
| time. You need the game just until you finish it and
| every replat is of same quality. Of all the possible
| analogies, you could have made a better choice
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| What's a better analogy?
| whynotminot wrote:
| Also an entirely different industry, with entirely
| different costs, constraints, and production practices.
| Can we stop using oranges as we talk about apples?
|
| While we're here though, actually, yes, car manufacturers
| would _love_ it if people would stop buying used cars. In
| fact, there were whole lawsuits in the past about planned
| obsolescence, and dealers today often run promotions to
| get you to turn in your used "clunker" and buy a new
| ride.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| And also, what do you think warranties, dealer repair
| shops , and certified pre-owned cares are about? They are
| trying to take a cut of that business? If we could sell
| our games as a "certified pre-owned" DVD then it would
| have made a lot more sense to make a short, tight little
| single player game.
| grillvogel wrote:
| used game sales (as well as used sales of all other media) have
| always existed. this was not a cause of any problem for console
| game developers until around 2005 or so. the mid 2000s switch
| to the "next gen" platforms caused a lot of shittiness for
| gaming. mostly from publisher greed due to the potential for
| mass profits, and the increased cost of developing at higher
| fidelity. games were originally for a more niche audience, used
| to focus more on difficulty over "content" in order to get
| replay value and lifespan. but if you lower the difficulty you
| can hopefully get more players experiencing all of your
| "content", and hopefully you can get them to buy some more
| after they complete the main part of your game.
| chad_strategic wrote:
| r/wallstreetbets bets is doing what men and woman in suits and
| pant suits on Wall Street have been doing for years.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| I find myself wanting a modern brick and mortar version of
| RadioShack. I buy electronics at Best Buy, Staples (they will
| price match Amazon if the model number matches exactly), and more
| recently GameStop...I guess the closest approximation for what
| I'm looking for these days is a local MicroCenter.
| linuxftw wrote:
| MicroCenter is great if you live/work near one.
| impulser_ wrote:
| Short squeezes. You got to love them.
|
| Welcome to the biggest casino in the world.
| FishbowlPrime wrote:
| Here are a few pointers from a WSB member with a position in $GME
|
| 1. Short sellers have been running the stock into the ground over
| the past years and have been stupid enough to get to roughly 130%
| short interest as percentage of available float.
|
| 2. There are no more shares available for them to borrow and sell
| short, WSB has jumped into this trade following Ryan Cohen (your
| dog must know him), buying as many shares as possible, decreasing
| the float even further and pushing the price up.
|
| 3. Ryan Cohen owns about 13% of the company. He founded chewy.com
| and is an e-commerce wizard who will turn Gamstop around from a
| brick-and-mortar shop to a digital / e-commerce player. He joined
| the board last week together with two other former Chewy execs
| (COO and CMO). FYI GameStop digital sales are 300% yoy. Shorts
| pretend like Chewy never happened, Ryan has nothing to do with
| Gamestop and digital sales are nonexistent.
|
| 4. This short squeeze is inevitable. There are no other moves
| short sellers can do. They are trapped and check-mate is near. It
| will be similar to VW in 2008 and more aggressive than Overstock
| last year.
| tyleo wrote:
| This has also been a big topic on r/wallstreetbets where users
| have organized around squeezing the shorts today. I've been
| following with mild interest.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > This has also been a big topic on r/wallstreetbets where
| users have organized around squeezing the shorts today. I've
| been following with mild interest.
|
| Maybe I've been in Bitcoin for too long, but 2.5 to 44 is cause
| for this much attention? I guess I'm immune to that level of
| volatility these days.
|
| I mean I get the amount of security's fraud and agencies like
| the SEC just waiting to justify their inflated salaries and
| budgets... but with the level of fraud in the stock market and
| banks _this_ is likely what they would focus on as it they
| probably don 't have massive lobbiysists in Washington paying
| for them to shape legislation to match their grift.
|
| I've seen several Gamestops shut down and have going out of
| business sales for current inventory with long lines, I'm sure
| that would add to their liquidity situation in the short term
| if it was done at scale for recovering investments on
| outdated/old merchanidise. And given that people are less than
| prudent with their finances and stimulus checks/uncemployment
| and with so many people with nothing but time on their hands
| this growth due to lockdowns and massive unemployment isn't
| actually a realistic turn around after the initial crash in
| March?
|
| Wallstreetbets is always good for a laugh, and not always a
| healthy one; the place reminds you why a guy like Trump could
| be elected and gives actual credence to how the following adage
| holds true: Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
|
| Those guys are like the epitome of of the 'grater fool'
| business model for the low hanging fruit on the Internet that
| after spending a few minutes there you just start to feel bad
| for what the state of Humanity is.
|
| Tendies and cuck jokes aside, it's actually really telling what
| some people 'with money' are like when they're given a slight
| amount of Pseudonymity and are in great enough numbers.
|
| Kind of makes Jordan Belfort's stories (Wolf of Wallstreet) all
| the more poignant.
| ocbyc wrote:
| Is BTC still in the mid 30k? 2.5->44 is much better return
| than 3.5k -> 42k. I guess I've been trading GME too long for
| btc's volatility to phase me.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| Yes, but I've been in it since 2011. Your humble brag
| doesn't apply to me.
|
| My point being that this doesn't warrant the attention its
| getting when you see the bigger picture of outright fraud,
| and agencies should look into bank fraud and money
| laundering and stock manipulation of things like large
| pharmaceutical corps that have made billions from a litany
| of scams along the years, Moderna administration in CA
| already had to be halted due to patient complications. How
| many Corps have made out like bandits from bailouts and
| crushing the competition with perpetual lock downs and
| doing shady trade deals with politicians?
|
| I'm so over this, that the paper wealth pales in comparison
| to the asset inflation we're all seeing with no real
| benefit other than more billionaire wealth accumulation.
|
| PS: I don't trade, I'm accumulating in order to exit this
| insane system.
| echelon wrote:
| > Your humble brag doesn't apply to me.
|
| That wasn't a humble brag, it was a counter to your less
| than charitable characterization of GME stock behavior.
|
| If anything, you're bragging.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| The Ars article is woefully deficient in not even mentioning
| r/wallstreetbets.
| gamegoblin wrote:
| Another missing piece of information is that Michael Burry,
| famous for being the first one to short the housing market
| before the crash, also took a long position on GME relatively
| early.
|
| The announcement of his long position single-handedly caused
| the price to raise a non-trivial amount. IIRC his firm
| currently owns around 4% of GameStop.
| toast0 wrote:
| If you're a publicly traded company, and the stock price jumps
| like this; how long does it take to sell more shares and try to
| capture some of the craziness?
|
| Hertz was able to sell $29 million of stock during bankruptcy
| before the SEC asked them to stop. As Gamestop isn't bankrupt, it
| seems like fair game to make an offering while the price is high.
| 3001 wrote:
| Then they bail out the shorts who have been driving done the
| price for ages. GameStop also file some form for a shelf
| offering for 100M with the SEC recently. Note the 100M is
| dollar amount, so you want to sell when you know the stock is
| at peak, you will get the 100M but less stock unit.
| toast0 wrote:
| Everybody hates shorts, but if you can sell for $40ish today
| vs $5 6 months ago and $20 last week, and you need/would like
| some cash, and you have a shelf offering ready to go, why not
| sell today?
|
| If the price goes up to $80ish next week, then maybe issue
| some more shares to sell at that price too.
| 3001 wrote:
| Continuously issuing shares leads to
| dilution(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_dilution).
| This has a ramifications for board members like Ryan Cohen
| who wants to change the company trajectory and also tend to
| have a downward effect on the share price.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > Then they bail out the shorts who have been driving done
| the price for ages. GameStop also file some form for a shelf
| offering for 100M with the SEC recently. Note the 100M is
| dollar amount, so you want to sell when you know the stock is
| at peak, you will get the 100M but less stock unit.
|
| Can I be honest: its exactly this kind of BS that puts me off
| so much about the legacy Market systems; these systems create
| fake paper wealth that is intertwined with so many convoluted
| jargon, and twists and turns to give things the veneer of it
| being a _Capitalist_ undertaking but all it really is central
| bank enabled gambling frenzy that requires bail outs when it
| all blows up.
|
| How is this desirable, let alone sustainable, to those of you
| that I sincerely believe can see the obvious grift unfolding
| before your eyes for what it is?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| There's really no way to understand GameStop stock without
| looking at reddit: r/wallstreetbets.
|
| It's a meme stock, and a huuuuuuge amount of money is being
| dumped into it for... basically entertainment value. Roulette.
| 3001 wrote:
| And I pretty sure most these are tech money. Amazed at the
| amount of enthusiasm at team blind.
| randomopining wrote:
| GameStop is useless lol. They literally sell stuff that's
| already/going to be completely digitally sold in a decade.
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| Fundamentals and normal financial logic should be entirely
| disregarded when discussing this stock. This pure WSB.
| randomopining wrote:
| Yeah so it's confirmed to be basically 99% a pump and dump
| meme stock?
| FishbowlPrime wrote:
| No it's not. WSB is orchestrating a short squeeze. The aim
| is to make a transfer of wealth from shorts like Melvin
| Capital to WSB. This whole charade is due to the stupidity
| of short sellers who shorted more Gamestop shares than
| there are publicly traded. Check out the Overstock story
| from last year or VW from 2008. This will be exactly like
| that.
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