GameStop confirms: All German stores to close in early 2025
According to a media report, there is now sad certainty: games retailer GameStop is closing all its stores in Germany.
(Image: Brandi Lyon Photography / Shutterstock.com)
The video game retailer Gamestop will close all of its stores in Germany at the beginning of 2025. The company confirmed this on Instagram on Friday. This was preceded by a media report about the plans, which referred to statements from customers and employees of GameStop Germany.
As the portal Games Wirtschaft reported on Friday, all 69 GameStop stores in Germany are to close permanently on January 31, 2025. However, this was still unconfirmed information as of Friday afternoon.
Staff already informing customers
According to the report, the store managers had already been informed of the decision on Thursday. Staff in the stores had then also informed customers about the upcoming closure. Pre-orders are no longer possible in the store and the sale of vouchers has also been stopped.
On Friday afternoon, the social media team finally confirmed the rumors. When asked by a user whether GameStop Germany would be closing at the end of January, the company's German Instagram account only answered "yes". The company has not yet provided any further information.
Around 500 employees would be affected by the closure of all stores. He shed a few tears after the call with the termination message, writes a Reddit user who says he works in the management of a German branch. "It was the best work experience I've had in my life so far, I loved coming to work every day," he emphasizes.
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In the thread, other users and GameStop employees also have their say. They also regret the GameStop closure and confirm the information from Games Wirtschaft, according to which the workforce was informed of the closures on Thursday.
GameStop Germany's turnover in 2022/2023 was around 140 million euros with a profit of 2.8 million euros, although the retailer was still in the red in the previous financial year.
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Europe-wide trend
The US company Gamestop has been following the trend of withdrawing from the European market for some time. There are now only stores in France, Italy and Germany. In Austria, the retailer closed all of its stores last year. In France, Gamestop is still behind the store network of the Micromania retail chain, which specializes in video games and was taken over by GameStop in 2008. In Italy, all stores were taken over by the Italian retailer Cidiverte. A suitable investor in Germany has apparently not been found. The Christmas business is therefore likely to be a sell-off.
In 2021, the shares of the US parent company Gamestop played a central role as a "meme stock" in the dispute between a group of small investors and short sellers. Members of the Reddit community r/wallstreetbets had tried to drive up the value of the stock in order to force the short sellers to sell their shares. While the action was not permanently successful, it did cause a hedge fund to collapse and landed the ringleader in legal trouble and a hearing in parliament.
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