Back in the day when you wanted a video game, the only way you could get a video game was to go to a retail store and buy one. This has led to retail stores such as GameStop to flourish where they have been popping up in various countries around the world. However that scene has changed over the past few years.
So much so that according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, it seems that GameStop will be shutting down at least 150 of its stores around the world after sales and earnings dropped last year. This isn’t so much that gamers have stopped buying games, but rather the fact that more gamers are going digital with their purchases rather than physical.
This effectively means that retailers such as GameStop have been cut out during the transaction process, where gamers can now choose to either buy the game digitally from the developers themselves, or through platforms such as Steam, Green Man Gaming, Origins, Uplay, and so on.
Given that there’s almost no reason to own a physical copy of a game, apart from convenience or collection purposes, it is easy to see why more gamers are turning to digital. GameStop did not mention which stores will be shutting down, but if one day you notice that your local GameStop has shut its doors, you can probably guess why that is.
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