Selling your used gear and games at GameStop has long been a convenient way to carve a little off the price tag of your next purchase. Sure, you’ll almost certainly get more money on eBay, but who wants to spend all that time and effort?
Now, a YouTuber who goes by the handle RJCmedia discovered a pre-owned game promotion at the chain that turned out to be too good to be true. In a January 17 video, as spotted by Dexerto, the YouTuber discovered what he characterized as an “infinite money glitch” in which he bought a Nintendo Switch 2 gaming console — only to sell it back alongside a pre-owned game purchase for roughly $50 more.
“If you buy a Switch 2, you can trade it for more than you paid for it,” he exclaimed in the video.
The YouTuber took advantage of the exploit — not valuing all the time he spent, of course — by traveling to several stores over two days, netting a profit of $150.
I Found The GameStop Infinite Money Glitch.
But it didn’t take long for GameStop to catch onto the “glitch” once it was publicized.
In a Tuesday statement, GameStop’s official X account admitted that “our system briefly valued the pre-owned trade more than the new retail cost of the console itself, creating a narrow window where customers could repeat this transaction over and over again to amass infinite trade credit.”
“Effective immediately, the glitch has been patched,” the statement reads. “Trade promotions have been updated to ensure customers can no longer convert basic arithmetic into an endless revenue stream, and balance has been restored.”
The company also used the opportunity to “gently remind everyone that our stores are not designed to function as infinite money printers.”
Speaking of free money, GameStop became embroiled in a major meme trading controversy in 2021 after a “Wall Street Bets” community on Reddit banded together to send the company’s stock value soaring — temporarily.
The “short squeeze,” a massive surge in short selling of a stock that ignores the company’s business fundamentals, triggered major losses for hedge funds and short sellers and forced brokerage services company Robinhood to step in and shut it down, attracting criticism from politicians.
A second attempt in 2024 crashed and burned. While those who got out at exactly the right moment made a killing, those who didn’t time things perfectly were left out to dry.
In comparison, buying and reselling Nintendo consoles seems like a far less risky bet.
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