Retail apocalypse grips the country with more than 8,000 great American stores to close and experts say the bloodbath will only get worse https://t.co/4boBgbX4mr
— Daily Mail US (@Daily_MailUS) January 18, 2026
Game over may be flashing on the screen again for GameStop.
The once-dominant video game chain is expected to shutter around 470 stores in January alone, according to a blog that tracks its closures.
The retailer will be left with fewer than 2,000 stores — a far cry from its peak of more than 6,000 locations.
California is set to see the heaviest losses, with 50 closures expected this month. Texas follows with 44, then New York with 30, Florida with 25, and Pennsylvania with 24. In total, 40 states are expected to lose at least one GameStop location.
Founded in 1984 as Babbage’s, a small Texas-based software retailer, the company grew into the nation’s largest specialty video game chain during the console boom of the 1990s and 2000s.
At its height, GameStop was a fixture of malls and strip centers, known for midnight launches of blockbuster titles like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.
The shift to digital downloads and online marketplaces hit the chain hard and shopper numbers fell.
By the late 2010s, Wall Street viewed GameStop as a struggling brick-and-mortar relic with an uncertain future that become a shorthand for the ‘retail apocalypse’.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-15478163/gamestop-store-closures-retail-exodus.html