Is The End Near For Gamestop?!? (Update)

UPDATE: So it's come to my attention that CAMELOT331 who is the one to first report the news about Gamestop and their plans to close half their stores by the end of qrt 4 this year, also appears to be a bit of a former disgruntled employee of the Gamestop company. This doesn't automatically discredit his information, and he has demonstrated in the past having some insider insight about recent layoffs before they were officially announced, but we feel its important to note the part about being disgruntled, as that is something that might cloud ones judgment in their reporting of things about their former employee. He recently made a video where he claims people at Gamestop got him fired from his most recent employee for saying negative things about his former employee, he even acted a bit surprised about it though honestly its hard to tell if he was being sarcastic about that or not. (Yeah if your going to demonstrate a pattern of publicly talking bad about an employee, that defiantly could make it harder to get any kind of future employment). His entire channel seems to be dedicated to talking bad things about Gamestop and other retailers like Walmart.

So with that said we just want to stress once again as stated below, the part about stores closing and going in a different direction with the remaining stores is unconfirmed at this time. The parts about all the recent layoffs, and GameStop's financial struggles as they continue to deal with the recent shifts in the gaming industry towards a digital content download model have been well documented over the course of the last year through various mainstream media outlets. So regardless of how reliable CAMELOT331's info ends up being or not, the question posed about Gamestop's end being near still seems to be a viable one to me.

We will update this story once we hear more one way or the other.

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While most people when they hear the name Gamestop think video games, in recent years they have really stepped up their game when it comes to carrying action figures and collectibles. Every time you turn around some toy company is announcing a new Gamestop exclusive. For Gamestop this in large part has seemingly been a way to try and help make up for the loss of video game sales as more and more people turned to online downloads or just ordering their games from places like Amazon. For the toy companies, Gamestop has become one of the places they turned to after the collapse of Toys R' Us for new retail shelf space to sell their products.

Despite this newfound partnership between Gamestop and the toy industy, things have not been going well for the once giant game retailer, at least if you've been reading the financial reports this past year they haven't. In efforts to restructure the company, back in early August they laid off around 200 employees across multiple divisions followed by second round of layoffs a few weeks ago which focused on 120 corporate staff positions.

Last week the company held it's annual manager's conference where apparently even more bad news was relayed to employees, news that over half their retail stores in the US will be closed by the end of Qrt 4. Stores making less than $800k will likely be on the chopping block. The remaining stores are said to become primarily retro and tabletop gaming stores where people can play vintage arcade games as well as things like D&D and HeroClix, which to me sounds like they want to be new the local comic book store without the comics.

Now we should note that this latest news about the store closures and going a different direction comes via Youtuber CAMELOT331, who has demonstrated having fairly reliable inside sources at Gamestop in the past when it comes to this type of news, but by know means do we consider this anything officially confirmed. You can see his video were he lays out everything he has heard about what is going on with Gamestop below.



So assuming this all turns out to be true, what does that mean for the future??? Well first of all, sadly it means a lot of people have or are going to be without jobs similar to what we saw when Toys R' Us went under. Hopefully most who have worked there for any period of time saw the writing on the wall well before this and already started to make other arrangements for their future.

As for the toy collecting community and all the yet-to-be-released exclusives, well for the most part there is likely still enough time for most or all of them to be released as planned. For those that might not get released, they likely would end up going to another retailer or be released online like we saw with many of the unreleased Toys R' Us exclusives.

Also according to CAMELOT arround 2k+ stores here in the US will be remaining open for the foreseeable future and even under the new rumored model for those stores, action figures and collectibles could very likely remain an important part of the inventory they sell, assuming those stores manage to stay open for any significant period of time.

Let us know in the COMMENTS SECTION, how often do you check Gamestop these days for your action figure needs?