GameStop to Permanently Close Over 300 Stores in 2020

A GameStop location in Pennsylvania Google Street View

GameStop announced that it will permanently close more than 300 stores to meet or exceed the number of stores that it shut down last year.

“In 2020, we will continue our work to de-densify our global store fleet and anticipate store closures to be equal to or more than 320 net closures we saw in fiscal 2019 on a global basis,” CFO Jim Bell said Thursday in an earnings call, according to PC Magazine.

Currently, the firm has 5,500 stores across 14 countries. More than 321 retail locations were shut down in 2019 as the chain struggles to compete against digital game purchases via websites like Steam or GOG.

“Importantly, we want to emphasize that these store closures are a very specific and proactive part of our dedensification plan and they are not related to recent business trends,” Bell said, referring to the business shutdowns caused by the viral pandemic.

“Following several years of both organic and inorganic growth, this process is yielding profit synergies not heretofore realized. And in that light, we expect these closures to positively impact both sales and for growth as we transfer sales to nearby stores,” he said, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha.

The company drew controversy last week for keeping its stores open even as states and cities declared lockdowns amid the CCP virus pandemic. Gamestop said it was an essential business but later reversed course and temporarily shut down stores in the United States.

The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China before it was transmitted worldwide.

“We have temporarily closed our storefronts moving to curbside pickup at stores to facilitate online and pick-up-in-store orders and e-commerce deliveries only,” GameStop CEO George Sherman said in the call.