[quote name='arcane93']Well, to be fair, it is still costing them business. I'll only buy from them when there's a really good deal, but I take all of my other gaming purchases elsewhere. That means that every time I want a new title badly enough to pay full price or close to full price (doesn't happen terribly often, but it does), or every time the same deal can be found elsewhere, Amazon, Best Buy, etc. get my money and GameStop doesn't. It would be a lot easier for me to go to GameStop (there's one practically up the street from my office, and another two easily accessible on my commute), but unless the deal is really good, significantly better than I can get somewhere else, I'll go out of my way to go elsewhere to get a sealed copy.
I honestly can't remember when I last paid more than $20 for a game at a GameStop store (I have purchased more expensive titles from their website, but that's different, and in the majority of those cases it was for a deal too). What this usually ends up meaning is that I'm buying their clearance titles, the ones that they've marked down to move out. Presumably they're making less profit on them (or possibly even taking a little bit of a loss just to recoup their costs and clear shelf space). Even when I do shop there, they probably don't really make a whole lot of money off of me.
So yeah, I am still voting with my wallet. Unfortunately, every time I do go in the store, there's usually at least a couple people with their kids shopping as well, and they don't care. So I'm essentially out-voted.[/QUOTE]
Sales Revenue doesn't exist in a vacuum, though. To really oversimplify things, if they find some new idea that will save them $100 in overhead but it will cost them a single $50 sale, they will go ahead and do it because they're still making money.
Gutting copies helps prevent theft and it keeps them from needing to purchase some outside product or service (security guards, electronic tags, whatever). Of course it affects their sales negatively because no matter how small the minority is that won't buy gutted I would venture to say that there is nobody out there MORE likely to buy because it's gutted, so the sales hit is one way in the negative direction; The thing is that even though their sales revenue may suffer a tick they are saving so much money elsewhere that they come out on top.