In September 2020, when Cohen initially purchased a significant chunk of the company's shares, he proposed a plan to the board to focus GameStop on ecommerce opportunities. One example of those opportunities is tied to GameStop's core business, reselling used games. CohenGameStop repeatedly cited Cohen and his former colleague's experience with ecommerce as critical to ther roles on the board.
Like Blockbuster Video and Tower Records before it, video game retail stores are facing major challenges to their business model. As more people buy video games through digital storefronts like Steam or the Xbox Store, fewer buy games on physical discs from GameStop. That trend was a huge problem for the company — at least until the coronavirus pandemic forced millions of people indoors. Many of those people, with loads of free time on their hands suddenly, turned to video games. Sales of video-game hardware, software, accessories, and game cards, according to The NPD Group's monthly report — "the highest reported spend for a March month since the $1.8 billion achieved in March 2008.
By year's end, the video game industry's revenues had topped both sports and film combined, NPD found. GameStop's stock, meanwhile, has rebounded from about $5 per share in early January 2020 to nearly $20 per share by January 2021.