Two years ago,GameStophired Matt Furlong as its new CEO toshift its focus to e-commercedue to a shrinking demand for physical media. However, he has been fired, with Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen stepping up as executive chairman. As reported byKotaku, Cohen garnered a fanbase on Reddit at the height of the Wallstreet stock scandal, with followers treating him like he had the keys to homegrown success. He joined the GameStop board in 2021 and became chairman in June of that year after selling his home delivery pet food business for billions, and many saw his posts as cryptic clues hinting at investment opportunities in the company.RELATED:I Hate Gamestop But Its Slow Death Is Upsetting To WitnessFurlong was fired amidst news that GameStop is back in the red. It became profitable for the first time in years in March, but has since reported a $50.5 million loss, while over 800 stores closed in the last two years. The company even cancelled its Q1 2023 financial conference, and all it had to say on the matter was that its “former CEO has been terminated”.
Cohen instead took to Twitter to post, “Not for long”, and one look at the comments shows his dedicated fanbase treating him almost like an internet celebrity. Speaking toCNBC, a Reddit user went as far as to say that “He is the god figure of the meme-stock community”.
GameStop hasn’t had the best year so far–revenue is on the decline, customers are increasingly switching to digital, rendering physical storefronts redundant, and costs are rising. We saw the result of this last year with mass layoffs, but those haveonly continued into 2023. To put the situation into perspective, a store manager who goes by the name Red on TikTok said that “It was dead pre-Christmas, picked up during the holidays and then immediately died again after New Years”.
GameStop has tried a few things to make itself profitable again, such as hiring Furlong for his Amazon expertise to bring the store into the digital world, but that evidently hasn’t panned out. Another strategy it dove headfirst into was NFTs, a fad that has already died out. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re essentially digital receipts for pictures that cost hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars, purchased with cryptocurrency. you may also just right-click and download the image for free without hurting the environment.
This push brought a wave of backlash to GameStop, especially as it was found to allegedly beselling NFTs of indie games without permission. With both major strategies for modernising itself falling apart, it’s unclear where GameStop will go from here.
