“The count is: at least one, as of tomorrow. As for the rest, stay tuned.” That was GameStop’s answer when IGN asked how many closed stores it planned to bring back. It is not much of a rollout plan, and the retailer has stuck to it.
On September 10, GameStop posted on X that select closed stores would reopen nationwide starting September 11. The only location confirmed so far is 4756 Ridge Road, Suite P22, in Brooklyn, Ohio. A company spokesperson gave the Independent the same address a week later and repeated the line about staying tuned. No full list of locations, and no total, has been published.
After a year of closing stores
The turn is sharp. GameStop announced plans to shut locations across several states about nine months before the reopening, in an effort to cut costs and adjust to changing shopping habits. It never released a complete list, but local media and customer notices pointed to closures in Ohio, Illinois, New York, Kansas, Kentucky, Connecticut and Minnesota.
Fast Company counted 590 US stores closed during the company’s 2025 fiscal year, which ended January 31, 2026. GameStop described the closures as a “store portfolio optimization review”. A December SEC filing warned that a “significant number” of additional stores would go in the current fiscal year. By ScrapeHero’s count, 2,086 GameStop stores were operating in the US as of January 27, 2026. IGN put the total closed since 2020 at over a thousand.
Cohen buys, collectibles grow
Executives have been putting money in alongside the announcement. Fox Business reported that CEO Ryan Cohen bought 1 million shares on September 10 at an average of about $20.38 each, a purchase worth about $20.4 million, according to federal filings. Board member Alain Attal bought 5,000 shares the same day, worth about $100,000.
The business he is steering looks different from the one built on discs. Trading cards and other collectibles made up 45.1 percent of sales last quarter, against about 29 percent in fiscal 2025, Fox Business said, and collectibles sales were 57 percent higher than a year earlier. IGN pointed to the push into Funko Pops and similar items as one reason the chain may survive the decline of physical games. PlayStation has said it is ending support for physical games in 2028. IGN also noted that GameStop is trying to acquire eBay, which would broaden the company further.
The stock has stayed volatile since the 2021 meme-stock frenzy, when Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets traders helped drive it from under $20 to more than $480 at the peak. Over the past year the shares have fallen about 36 percent, Fast Company reported.
Sources
- GameStop Reopens Previously Closed Stores
- GameStop is reopening some of the hundreds of stores it has closed in recent years – AOL
