Let’s be real—GameStop has been on life support for years, but somehow, against all odds (and basic financial logic), it keeps dragging itself back from the brink like a low-level zombie in a survival horror game.
We’ve all seen it: the empty shelves, the desperate clearance sales, the weird pivot into Funko Pop hell. And yet, here we are in 2025, still asking the same damn question—how is this place still open?
The short answer? Pure, unhinged financial chaos.
The Rise, Fall, Meme Stock Resurrection, and Second Death of GameStop
If you were alive in early 2021 and had an internet connection, you remember when a bunch of Redditors memed GameStop stock into the stratosphere. WallStreetBets saw that hedge funds were shorting the hell out of the company, called their bluff, and basically forced a financial reckoning so absurd that even Hollywood rushed to make a movie about it (yes, Dumb Money was a thing).
For a hot second, GameStop became something it hadn’t been in years—relevant.
Stock prices soared. The company suddenly had money. There was talk of a reinvention—maybe an e-commerce pivot, maybe blockchain gaming (lol), maybe something that wasn’t just selling marked-up used copies of Call of Duty from 2014.
None of it panned out.
Because at the end of the day, GameStop is still a relic from an era when physical games mattered.
The Digital Apocalypse GameStop Pretended Would Never Come
When was the last time you needed to go to a GameStop? Like, actually needed to?
I can tell you when it was for me: about a decade ago, when I wanted to trade in a stack of games for some insultingly low store credit.
That’s the problem. Digital game sales have completely taken over, and GameStop never found a way to meaningfully pivot.
- Steam killed the need for PC game discs.
- Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus made it easier (and cheaper) to just subscribe instead of buying games.
- Developers love digital-only sales because there’s no secondhand market cutting into their profits.
- The last people buying discs are hardcore collectors—and they’re doing it online, not in a strip mall store that smells like Axe body spray and despair.
The moment consoles stopped requiring discs, GameStop lost its entire reason to exist.
Desperation Moves and a Slow, Painful Death
So what has GameStop been doing to stay afloat? Oh, you know—everything except actually fixing their business model.
- They tried pivoting to collectibles and toys. Now 40% of the store is Funko Pops no one wants.
- They launched a terrible NFT marketplace. It bombed instantly.
- They fired their entire e-commerce team. No, really.
- They closed hundreds of stores, then opened new ones. A bold strategy. Let’s see how it plays out.
Meanwhile, employee horror stories are legendary—horrible pay, insane sales quotas, constant layoffs. You can find entire Reddit threads of ex-GameStop employees airing out the worst of it.
So… Is This Finally the End?
Look, I’ve been hearing “GameStop is dying” for years, but this time, it actually feels like the final nail is coming.
The company’s revenue is tanking. They’re still closing stores left and right. The stock market stopped caring.
And the real killer? Retail is a corpse.
Best Buy is phasing out physical media. Walmart barely carries video games anymore. The last remaining Blockbuster is just a meme now. GameStop is clinging to a past that doesn’t exist anymore.
So will it finally go out of business? Probably not tomorrow. Maybe not even this year. But the writing has been on the wall for a decade, and there’s no meme stock magic left to save them this time.
When it finally happens, when the last GameStop shuts its doors forever, I can promise you one thing—there will still be someone standing outside, trying to trade in a used copy of Skyrim for five bucks.