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    GameStop starts 2026 by closing hundreds of stores as CEO gambles on $35B payday; As CEO Ryan Cohen is promised billions, GameStop employees claim they were barely given notice about closures
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    GameStop starts 2026 by closing hundreds of stores as CEO gambles on $35B payday; As CEO Ryan Cohen is promised billions, GameStop employees claim they were barely given notice about closures


    GameStop starts 2026 by closing hundreds of stores as CEO gambles on $35B payday; As CEO Ryan Cohen is promised billions, GameStop employees claim they were barely given notice about closures

    https://www.polygon.com/gamestop-closing-stores-as-ceo-payday/

    View 36 Comments

    36 Comments

    1. celtic1888 on

      Us mere mortals could never understand the importance, power and beauty of such an amazing man as the CEO of GameStop

      I think we should literally give him $50 billion

      Edit: and all the sheep are lining up to be sheered 

    2. SuperSecretAgentMan on

      GameStop isn’t a gaming company anymore. It’s a hedge fund that happens to own some stores that sell videogame accessories.
      95% of their profits come from collecting interest on their assets.

    3. Actually-Yo-Momma on

      Terrible headline. CEO “promised billions” is very misleading considering it’s split into 9 vesting tiers where he would need to purchase shares (not direct compensation) AND raise market cap by 10x to be fully compensated 

    4. double297 on

      The comments on this thread are so very very misinformed and I completely understand based on the intentionally poor verbiage in this headline and its clear intent to mislead.

    8. Kirth87 on

      Losta sloppy CEO glazing here. Guessing some of you never worked the private sector or in the for-profit healthcare service industry.

      Truly astonishing.

      You’ll never be millionaires, btw. Keep roleplaying on Reddit, though!!

    9. darren_meier on

      I’m not remotely surprised at more closings… for the brick-and-mortar end of the business, there hasn’t been in viable strategy in ages. The margins are too low for most stuff to satisfy Wall Street and the used resale game is just a form of arbitrage that frankly GameStop were never all that good at. All the subsequent attempts to pivot (ThinkGeek, Funco, etc.) were never going to be long-term answers. Stuff like PowerPacks seems like it might work for a while– there are no shortage of people who are down to gamble recklessly– but even that seems to have a determinate shelf life. Not sure how GameStop’s gonna manage this transition, but as more stores the back-end infrastructure to support the remaining ones is going to make less and less sense. I’d guess in three years, maybe four, GameStop doesn’t have any physical locations left. Cohen’s deal is almost entirely incentive-based, so I don’t have much issue with that. If he’s actually able to drive the results needed (he almost certainly won’t), he’ll have earned that money.

    10. Daddysgravy on

      Look at all the GME stock cultists swarming this post to excuse their god king Ryan Cohen graciously cutting hundreds of jobs for… uh.. for… hmm. Hey look here! Roaring Kitty has new awards in his bio! What could it mean?

    11. dragonmantank on

      A few years ago they closed my local store. I had to drive 30 minutes to the one they moved everything to.

      I got the email last week or whatever they are closing that store now. I have to drive over 60 minutes now to get to a GameStop store.

      I’m just not going to do that. If I’m driving 60 minutes, I’m hitting up the better used stores at that point.

    15. DarkObby on

      Companies are but another medium for C-suite executives to extract all value from into their bank accounts and then leave behind the corpse.

    18. ChiknBreast on

      Extremely poor headline that is misleading. RC currently take no salary for his position on the board. If you look at the announcement his reward is the ability to buy shares at a certain price, ONLY if the company’s revenue increases beyond a certain point.

    21. Ssme812 on

      90% on the GS in NYC closed years ago. I only know 2 in Manhattan that are still around.

    24. Dyne4R on

      I’m in a small city. There’s a single Gamestop in the city. I got an email on the 4th letting me know that the store is closing on the 15th, and that any preorders I may have are being automatically transferred to a store in a city that is a 90 minute drive from here. I went by the store, figuring maybe I can scoop up something on clearance. Instead, almost their entire inventory was already transferred to another store. The employee that was there said he found out about the closure at the same time the emails went out to customers. They were hiring for a new assistant manager last month, so it definitely blindsided them.

    26. OperativePiGuy on

      I see some of the gamestop investors are in the comments being very defensive lmfao

    28. guspaz on

      Promising up to $35 billion in compensation to the CEO of a company with $3.8 billion in annual revenue is… a choice.

      I sure am glad that GameStop Canada was sold in 2025 and is now independent. It’s since been rebranded back (again) to “EB Games”.

    30. ImThe1Wh0 on

      I can attest to this. I got notified Monday, that my store was closing TODAY via an email. I went Tuesday after work to see if there were any good sales and NOPE. No deals, everything still full price. Just boxing things up to send to corporate to send to a different store. My wife recently found her PS3 and started playing it. We went to look at games and they were still like “full” price. Not even on clearance. It’s like dude, seriously? GameStop is going to stress over making full price on this $3.99 game? The dude was STILL pushing that warranty for games bullshit during the purchase too. My brother in capitalism, you can’t lose your job over a secret shopper at this point. The fuck am I going to do, drive the 2.5 hrs to the next closest one for a new copy of Little Big Planet?

    31. Playgirl_USMC on

      The CEO only gets paid if the company’s market cap increases. Otherwise he hasn’t been paid at all the whole time he has been in charge. Seems to me that he is turning this company around by cutting stores that are not profitable.

    35. Ok_Function2282 on

      This is like a taxi driver being surprised his job is getting eroded by Uber. 

      It’s 2026. Did you think you had job security at a fucking GameStop?????