GameStop reportedly to shut a fifth of its 2,000 stores this month
Game over may be flashing on the screen again for GameStop. The once-dominant video game chain is expected to shutter around 470 stores in January alone, according to a blog that tracks its closures. The retailer will be left with fewer than 2,000 stores — a far cry from its peak of more than 6,000 locations. California is set to see the heaviest losses, with 50 closures expected this month. Texas follows with 44, then New York with 30, Florida with 25, and Pennsylvania with 24. In total, 40 states are expected to lose at least one GameStop location. Founded in 1984 as Babbage’s, a small Texas-based software retailer, the company grew into the nation’s largest specialty video game chain during the console boom of the 1990s and 2000s.The meme stock mirage At its height, GameStop was a fixture of malls and strip centers, known for midnight launches of blockbuster titles like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. The shift to digital downloads and online marketplaces hit the chain hard and shopper numbers fell. By the late 2010s, Wall Street viewed GameStop as a struggling brick-and-mortar relic with an uncertain future that become a shorthand for the ‘retail apocalypse’. Then 2021 brought a sudden reversal of fortunes — at least in GameStop’s share price, if not in shopper numbers — as bored Americans turned to stock trading during Covid lockdowns.Reinventing the relic Hedge funds had bet millions that GameStop would go bankrupt, shutter its stores, and see its shares collapse to zero. Instead, a loosely organized army of Reddit traders from WallStreetBets piled into the stock, triggering a historic short squeeze that sent GameStop’s shares rocketing from under $20 to hundreds of dollars in a matter of days. The surge allowed the company to raise fresh cash and generated an avalanche of free publicity. GameStop used both to attempt a reinvention.The shrinking footprint In 2023, the company installed Ryan Cohen(pictured right)— co-founder of online pet retailer Chewy — as chairman, trimmed its store footprint, overhauled management, and talked up ambitions to become a broader e-commerce and technology-focused retailer. It has experimented with everything from PC gaming gear to collectibles and, briefly, a foray into cryptocurrency. But it has yet to make regular profits. Today, GameStop occupies a rare place in corporate America— it's part traditional retailer, part meme-stock icon. Its shares still swing on waves of online chatter, while its stores continue to servea shrinking but loyal base of gamers and collectors. The Daily Mail has reached out to GameStop for comment. GameStop's struggle is playing out against a brutal backdrop for brick-and-mortar retail more broadly. Data shared with the Daily Mail shows 8,234 US stores shut in 2025 — a staggering figure that marks a fresh blow to brick-and-mortar retail. That’s 12 percent more than l ast year’s total of 7,325 closures, according to Coresight Research. Already this year, Macy's said it will close 14 more of its stores in 12 states across the US as it continues its plan to shutter 150 unprofitable locations by the end of the year.
