GameStop to Close Hundreds of Stores as CEO Aims $35 Billion Payout - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 12 January 2026 / 2,689 Views
GameStop is reportedly set to close hundreds of stores as CEO Ryan Cohen is looking for a $35 billion payout in performance-based stock options.
There are reports online from people posting their local GameStop has closed or will be closing soon with some stores offering a 20 percent trade-in bonus for a limited time as compensation.
"This store is closed effective 1/8/26," reads a sign on the door of one GameStop. "Thank you for being a loyal GameStop customer."
A blog that is keeping track of closures is currently claiming 470 stores are closing or are already closed. This is nearly 25 percent of the 2,091 stores that were open in December in the US.
Thanks, IGN.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Standalone game retailers seem to be on their last legs. I can’t speak for the US but in the UK they are pretty much all gone.
If I go back even 15 years you have big ones like Game and Gamestation and a few smaller ones like Grainger Games. Plus places like Blockbuster, HMV, Argos and Tesco would stock them as well. Even 10 years ago most of those places were still going.
Now Gamestation and Grangier Games are gone. Neither Tesco or HMV sell games anymore. Game, despite technically still being the largest video game retailer in the country is only a concession within Sports Direct.
I wonder is GameStop is facing a similar fate over in the US. I did think they’d have $35 billion to hand to payout.
They don't have that much money to hand out lol. It's stock-based. So it's completely dependent on how high their stock prices go. A good way to do that? Shutdown a ton of stores lol. Company isn't actually paying him that money.
Still, I think it's terrible that executives have incentives like this because they'll do whatever it takes to manipulate the company's stock price in order to get payouts of this caliber.
Seeing that Gamestop destroys old games and boxart and manuals. I await when Gamestop goes out of business. Fuck them. 20 years since I was a manager there and some of those horrible practices never went away.
The gaming world ia getting more boring by the year.
Sadly almost all gamestores are gone here, gone of the days of going to thr city to check out games,now its just looking at boring online store pages.
where is the outrage? we must boycott!! J/K good for him if he pulls in that kind of money
Gamestop is also closing down EB Games in New Zealand.
They scaled back Australian operations and shut down a heap of stores, but retained profitable outlets a few years back.
Sadly their approach of high Prices has not retained customer loyalty as the industry shifted to a digital distributed world... I am still a Physical-only guy with consoles, but EB Games is the last place I will give my money, I rather support Gamesmen (Independent) or another Australian retailer rather than an American-based behemoth who is out to fleece people.
Australia first.
471 stores ? O_o that sounds like alot.
How exactly does closing a quarter of their stores get the CEO closer to expanding business so much that he gets that enormous payday?
Looks like Wallstreet bets did not save them.
