GameStop, in various iterations, has been a video game and gaming-related merchandise retailer since 1984. While many brick and mortar shops have closed their doors permanently as consumers shift increasingly to online shopping, GameStop has managed to keep many stores open despite rollercoaster stock prices and seemingly constant financial issues.
The retailer seems to be revamping its sales model and last month recruited former Amazon executives with experience in developing a successful online marketplace. And thanks to the GameStonks phenomenon that caused the retailer's stocks to soar in January and May, GameStop announced a 25% net increase in profits in Q1 2021.
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The franchise has become a mainstay in the gaming community, yet until now it has remained absent from Discord, another service that has itself become a staple for many gamers. Today, GameStop launched its own Discord channel, and within two hours of the announcement, nearly 6,000 people had joined. With over 140 million active monthly users, Discord seems an ideal place for GameStop to establish a community, a place for people to share their passion for video games. Already, the GameStop Discord has channels for popular titles like Apex Legends and Destiny 2, where players can chat or look for people to jump into a game with.
One issue with having such a large number of members is the potential for spam, off-topic conversations inundating every channel, and chat moving much too quickly to keep up with. And there are other problems to be ironed out as well. Currently, some members in the GameStop Discord can only post a message once per minute, others cannot share images, and all of the available channels are not visible to everybody. Hopefully, with the addition of more moderators and a little tweaking, these matters will soon be dealt with.
Discord has been around for over six years now, and the communication platform has facilitated the creation of communities with a wide variety of interests and topics. For many gamers, it replaced established and popular VoIP applications like TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, and Mumble. Industry leaders such as Xbox, EA, and Ubisoft have servers on the platform, and Sony partnered with Discord directly with plans to bring voice chat to PlayStation in 2022.
With so many gamers relying on a single platform for party chat and as a general gathering place to meet like-minded people, there are bound to be hiccups. In May and June, Discord had connection issues, leaving many users frustrated and posting about it on Twitter. For the most part, however, Discord has proven to be a stable platform and should be a reliable place for GameStop fans to hang out and build communities.
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