Short answers, pulled from the story.
GameStop traces its origins to a single store opened in 1984 by two former Harvard Business School classmates, James McCurry and Gary Kusin. The founders named their Dallas-based venture Babbage's after the 19th-century computer pioneer Charles Babbage.
The company launched the GameStop brand with 30 stores and introduced gamestop.com, an online platform for purchasing video games, in 1999. This launch signaled a shift toward digital retail for the company.
GameStop's stock price skyrocketed from $17.25 to over $500 per share in January 2021, a 1,500% increase over two weeks. This surge was driven by retail investors on Reddit who noticed that short interest exceeded 100% of the company's free float.
Over 400 stores closed in January 2025, the highest number of closures in a single month, as consumer shift to online marketplaces led to a significant decline in revenue. The pandemic also accelerated the company's decline during this period.
Ryan Cohen, founder of Chewy and a large GameStop shareholder, was named chairman in 2021 and took over as CEO in September 2023 without collecting a salary. Cohen's leadership focused on restructuring the company and launching an NFT platform in 2021.
As of 2025, GameStop operates 3,203 stores, including 2,325 in the United States, 374 in Australia, and 311 in Europe. The company sold its 193 Canadian stores in May 2025 and plans to sell its French operations in February 2025.