GameStop, the iconic video game retail chain, is undergoing a radical transformation as its chairman and billionaire founder of Chewy, Ryan Cohen, takes the helm as CEO. In his first email to staff, Cohen emphasized the necessity of “extreme frugality” and warned against “time wasters” as the company grapples with financial challenges. Despite Cohen’s involvement with GameStop since 2021, the company has struggled to achieve profitability. Efforts to diversify, including ventures into online deliveries, NFTs, and non-gaming products, have not yielded substantial returns. GameStop’s profitability remains hampered by the industry-wide shift from physical game sales to digital downloads.
The recent departure of several top executives, including Cohen’s own choice for CEO, Matt Furlong, has left the company facing increased uncertainty. GameStop initiated multiple rounds of layoffs in 2022, even though it still holds approximately $1 billion in cash reserves, largely from the meme stock phenomenon. Cohen’s message to employees was blunt and uncompromising: “Every expense at the company must be scrutinized under a microscope, and all waste eliminated.” He stressed the need for employees to treat company funds as their own and emphasized that GameStop must operate efficiently and profitably.
The challenges facing GameStop are significant, with digital downloads gaining ground over physical sales. To compound matters, leaked information suggests that Microsoft may eliminate disc drives from future Xbox consoles. While collectibles like Funko Pop! have taken up more shelf space in GameStop stores, they have not offset the declining sales of used games.
That’s bad for the employees, usually that means lower wages if they’re being frugal. I hope it affects the company from the top earners rather than the underpaid people
Top earners only get paid in stock, Ryan isn’t taking any salary. There’s no less they can take.
They would do best to just drop Microsoft stuff beyond hardware sales and focus more on playstation and Nintendo brands, more retro sales and cut a bit of the non gaming pop culture glut.
people shop at gamestop
Another big short squeeze is setting up now
gamestop is dead…
And yet, it’s doing just fine. Going from near bankruptcy to profitable isn’t easy and requires loyal shoppers. gamestop appears to be on the uptrend not down. Weird how so many rich people need gamestop to fail though, could be all the naked shorts that can’t close or be profitable unless gamestop goes bust…guess we should buy more sharesls and direct register them to help stop stock market ponzi scams citadel and other market makers are running.
No it’s dead. It is highly overvalued and has been since the millennial push. Now it is just dying again.
Gamestop is a great company with a huge base of shoppers and investors. If it fails at least it was because it died naturally and not due to overpaid ceos tanking the company while citadel makes bank on naked short selling. For now, I buy more gme stock and continue to shop, it’s all a person can do to keep a company alive.
Maybe Gamestop can start by not opening new copies of games to then sticker up the boxes and instead keep them sealed? You know, attract back the customers that buy a lot of games and care about condition as well as enjoy the satisfaction of opening something they paid for. I wouldn’t buy a box of cereal that had the top opened and the bag opened but taped back close… it’s only for the absolute best of deals that I’ll even consider buying anything from GS (and even then I mostly pass). Which is a shame because GS should be a reliable source for games to more serious gamers who care about their collection.
This would actually be a nice way for the company to save some money too on both stickers and wasted time opening games. Win win.
There are still lots of gamers who prefer owning physical media. If GameStop closed a few locations and refocused their efforts on making the store experience less of a nightmare, they could probably draw in more customers. Funko Pops are just a band-aid over a gaping wound, people need incentive to seek out GS over other retail locations and to know they won’t be assaulted by ads the second they walk in
I love collecting Funko pop collectables, i personally probably spend more time at Gamestop looking the Funko pops then looking at the games on the sales floor.
It had been awhile since I entered a Gamestop Store, I was pretty surprised to mainly see Merch instead of games. There are many factors to the decline of their sales from digital goods, to advertisements, & to how the pandemic affected them, or how they treated their employees ( leaks from ex gamestop employee turned youtuber). From that I stopped supporting Gamestop.
But I mainly went all digital with the release of the steam deck, quest 2 etc…
Had a super long line for midnight release of TOTK in Chicago. They had some trivia going while we waited. Manager was super appreciative. More events like that would help. Make it a place people want to spend time at. Maybe have more demo’s available. More in person tournaments
I agree with the box opening thing for new games. Then they insist on ruining the value of everything with their damn stickers. Collectors dont want damaged items, they want pristine.
However, my big issue is the reason I stopped going. They dont really have any good deals on used games anymore. In fact going game diving at Gamestop isnt even a thing anymore cause they dont have many used games at all. I used to find all kinds of deals and now Im lucky if I even see a used game at all. So whats the point of me going to gamestop? If I want a new game I go online so it isnt damaged by gamestop. If I want a used game, I also have to go online now.
Correction, the second time I stopped going to GS is because I gave them another chance and there werent any used games anymore. The first time was because of the pushy sales pitch to get me to buy some rewards card which I didnt want. And everytime I’d go Id get peppered to death about the damn card so I just quit going to avoid the super pushy sales pitch
“Treat company funds as your own” but you will never see a penny of it if we ever get back to profitability. These billionaires are a delusional selfish bunch.