GameStop Fires CEO After Only Two Years
Two years ago, GameStop hired Matt Furlong as its new CEO to shift its focus to e-commerce due to a shrinking demand for physical media. However, he has been fired, with Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen stepping up as executive chairman.
As reported by Kotaku, Cohen garnered a fanbase on Reddit at the height of the Wallstreet stock scandal, with followers treating him like he had the keys to homegrown success. He joined the GameStop board in 2021 and became chairman in June of that year after selling his home delivery pet food business for billions, and many saw his posts as cryptic clues hinting at investment opportunities in the company.
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Furlong was fired amidst news that GameStop is back in the red. It became profitable for the first time in years in March, but has since reported a $50.5 million loss, while over 800 stores closed in the last two years. The company even cancelled its Q1 2023 financial conference, and all it had to say on the matter was that its "former CEO has been terminated".
Cohen instead took to Twitter to post, "Not for long", and one look at the comments shows his dedicated fanbase treating him almost like an internet celebrity. Speaking to CNBC, a Reddit user went as far as to say that "He is the god figure of the meme-stock community".
GameStop hasn't had the best year so far--revenue is on the decline, customers are increasingly switching to digital, rendering physical storefronts redundant, and costs are rising. We saw the result of this last year with mass layoffs, but those have only continued into 2023. To put the situation into perspective, a store manager who goes by the name Red on TikTok said that "It was dead
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