GameStop announced on Tuesday that it has laid off an undisclosed number of employees as part of its cost-cutting measures following financial hurdles throughout the past years, Reuters reported.
The videogame retailer, which primarily sells hard copies, said it will also be shutting down its business operations in Ireland, Switzerland, and Australia.
GameStop pointed to sales slowdown, increasing debts, inflation, and rising competition in the videogame market as the main factors for the lackluster earnings since the pandemic.
The announcement came after a disappointing fourth-quarter revenue report.
GameStop's shares fell by 17% to a little over $15 per stock following the announcement.
GameStop Struggles to Regain Momentum After Pandemic Hype
Since its brief revival during the pandemic, GameStop has reportedly been struggling to bring the dying business back to life despite numerous efforts.
The company has previously done management reshuffles and workforce cutdowns to ease its expenses for other business ventures but none has yet stuck to its customers.
Just recently, the videogame retailer shut down its NFT marketplace as the hype around cryptocurrency has died down after it first went viral during the pandemic season.
It is worth noting that fewer people are buying from physical game retail stores like GameStop as publishers put out their games online immediately as soon as it released, a much more convenient option than waiting in a line in the middle of the night to get the first copy.
Hard copies have also notably changed over the years as they often only contain the code or link to install the game, rather than a physical disk.
As of writing, the company still has yet to announce solid plans to regain revenues as it heads down to irrelevance and, soon, bankruptcy.
Related Article : GameStop Shuts Down NFT Marketplace, Retreats from Crypto Space
Tech Industry's Layoffs Continue to Grow in 2024
As with other companies in the tech industries struggling to keep their finances, more layoffs are being recorded this year following the monumental job cuts made last year.
Industry job tracker Layoffs.fyi already recorded over 50,800 confirmed layoffs since 2024 started. The numbers do not include undisclosed job cut counts like from Amazon and Google.
