After cutting half of Game Informer's staff today, GameStop has also laid off more than 120 employees from corporate office. This is in addition to the dozens of regional managers that were let go just 2 weeks ago.
Even after the last round of lay offs, GameStop stock has been in a state of free fall. Today's lay offs represent a major restructure in an effort to save the company from bankruptcy. The way things are going though, it looks like they don't have very much time.
In a statement provided to Kotaku, GameStop explained that the lay offs were necessary in order to reduce cost and optimize the business:
“As part of the previously announced GameStop Reboot initiative to transform our business for the future and improve our financial performance, we can confirm a workforce reduction was implemented impacting more than 120 corporate staff positions, representing approximately 14% of our total associate base at our company headquarters as well as at some other offices. While these changes are difficult, they were necessary to reduce costs and better align the organization with our efforts to optimize the business to meet our future objectives and success factors. We recognize that this is a difficult day for our company and particularly for those associates impacted. We appreciate their dedication and service to GameStop and are committed to supporting them during this time of transition."
The statement doesn't address the simultaneous layoff at Game Informer, the legacy gaming magazine owned by GameStop. More than half of the Michigan based gaming writers lost their jobs today, including virtually all of the senior staff and editors. Editor-in-Chief Andy McNamara tweeted a response to the lay offs, saying he would address issues when the time was right, but that he had to focus on his Game Informer family.
Twitter has been very vocally in support of the GI crew who had no forewarning that this was coming. With the additional GameStop corporate employees now also laid off, many people have been digging into GameStop's financials as a way to cope; with a little bit of amateur detective work. A list of executives with multi-million dollar yearly earning has been going around Twitter as well as a link to an unpaid internship opportunity at Game Informer.
Gamestop is obviously in rough shape. Analysts expect their stock to bottom out at $1.51 a share, as they are already down 72% for the year. This restructure is meant to stop the bleeding and refocus the brand on profitability. Unfortunately, cutting beloved Game Informer staff is not going to earn the chain any good favor with gamers, and the additional cutting of 120 more corporate employees shows how desperate things are.
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