GameStop shutters hundreds of stores as CEO gambles on $35B payday

In the first weekend of 2026, many surprised GameStop customers were notified that their local stores would soon be closing down. But if GameStop is doing poorly right now, it’s not evident from the headlines currently circulating about the gaming retailer. Instead, GameStop’s company board proudly announced that it would be offering CEO Ryan Cohen up to $35 billion in performance-based stock options, with one catch. The meme stock overlord needs to raise GameStop’s market cap by billions of dollars, and ensure that its earnings are similarly explosive.

To the chagrin of some affected workers, news of their impending unemployment was dispersed with print-outs taped to storefronts, where customers could scan a QR code to get a coupon for a 20% trade-in bonus. That same bonus was also mentioned in the emails sent directly to customers, according to social media posts. A number of customers note that nearby closures have left them with few options for purchasing games, with some having to drive anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour to get to the next available GameStop. While many customers learned of the closures at the last moment, others took advantage of the situation by hitting up their local stores for goodies, like store displays and posters.

As some employees tell it, some of the closures came as a shock — even well-performing locations weren’t safe from the shutdowns. By some estimates, up to 296 stores closed this week or will soon shutter their doors, with dozens more still in the process of being confirmed for the total count.

“We are all cattle to the corporate [masters], numbers on a sheet, disposed of at their whim,” one worker affected by the closures wrote on Reddit.

Employees say that they are being told in waves about closures, meaning that there could still be more to come. Some workers claim that they were only given a few days’ notice about the closures. Only some employees are fortunate enough to be transferred to other GameStop locations. Customers walking into affected stores that haven’t closed yet might notice that they are unusually bare, as employees note that distributions to their locations have trickled down this month.

As workers commiserate over their situations, GameStop corporate is aiming for growth. CEO Ryan Cohen was recently promised a $35B payout in stock options, but only if the retailer reaches a market cap of $100 billion and reaches cumulative earnings of at least $10 billion. These are ambitious numbers. Currently, GameStop’s market cap is valued at 9.52 billion. The company would need to grow ten times its current size for Cohen to land the bonus. But Cohen does have some incentive to reach those numbers. The CEO otherwise has “no guaranteed pay—no salary, no cash bonuses, and no stock that vests simply over time,” an SEC filing reads. “Instead, his compensation is entirely ‘at-risk,’ meaning he will only be paid if the Company achieves significant market and operational goals.”

But as Cohen eyes a major payday, displaced workers have spent the start of 2026 sharing their disappointment.

“GameStop doesn’t deserve the rotten gum on my shoe, but I’m gonna miss my store,” one employee wrote in a recent Reddit thread collating grievances. “This location was my childhood GameStop. I actually found a list that I made as a kid where one of my favorite things I wrote was GameStop.”