Short answers, pulled from the story.
GameStop was founded in Dallas in 1984 under the name Babbage's, started by former Harvard Business School classmates James McCurry and Gary Kusin. The company took the GameStop name in 1999 when Babbage's Etc. launched the GameStop brand with 30 stores in strip malls.
GameStop's stock rose roughly 1,500% over two weeks, reaching an all-time intraday high of over US$500.00 on the 29th of January 2021. The shares had been trading at $17.25 before retail investors on Reddit began coordinating purchases after noticing that short interest exceeded 100% of available shares.
The shift of video game sales to digital platforms and online shopping steadily eroded GameStop's core business. The company reported a record net loss of $673 million for fiscal year 2018 and has closed thousands of locations since its peak of over 7,500 stores. Over 400 stores closed in January 2025 alone, the highest single-month closure count in company history.
Ryan Cohen is the founder of the pet supply company Chewy. He became a significant GameStop shareholder and was named chairman in April 2021, effective June 2021. He removed CEO Matt Furlong in June 2023 and assumed the CEO role himself in September 2023, taking no salary.
Circle of Life was an internal sales program revealed publicly in February 2017 that required each GameStop employee to hit percentage targets for pre-orders, reward card sign-ups, used game sales, and trade-ins. Former employees reported that the policy led them to mislead customers. GameStop later revised the program to evaluate store-level performance rather than individual metrics.
On the 25th of March 2025, GameStop announced a plan to use its cash reserves to buy Bitcoin. The announcement came as the company continued closing stores and sought new revenue strategies beyond physical game retail.