GameStop just cleared a hurdle nobody was watching

GameStop shareholders approved a routine-sounding item on Tuesday: more authorized Class A shares.

The timing complicates that read. Six days earlier, Sony confirmed it will stop manufacturing physical PlayStation game discs starting in January 2028, closing the book on the exact product category GameStop was built to sell.

Sony’s move wasn’t really a surprise. Nearly four in five full-game purchases on PS4 and PS5 already happen digitally, based on Sony’s own disclosures cited by TheStreet.

Physical video game spending fell to $1.5 billion in 2025, the lowest total since Circana began tracking the category in 1995.

Related: Ryan Cohen passes on GameStop payday to keep pushing one acquisition

GameStop has spent two years adjusting to that decline. Collectibles and trading cards made up 41.8% of first quarter revenue in fiscal 2026, up from 28.9% a year earlier, according to a GameStop SEC filing.

The company also closed 430 stores across 42 states in January 2026 alone, shrinking a footprint built for a disc business that keeps shrinking with it.

GameStop’s first eBay bid ran into a wall

That pivot doesn’t touch GameStop’s other big project. In May, GameStop submitted a non-binding proposal to acquire all of eBay at $125 per share in cash and stock, a 46% premium to eBay’s pre-bid price.

eBay’s board rejected the offer nine days later, calling it “neither credible nor attractive” in a letter from chairman Paul Pressler, according to CNBC.

The board’s stated concern was financing. GameStop’s plan leaned on roughly $9.4 billion in cash and liquid assets plus up to $20 billion in third-party financing, a structure that left several analysts unconvinced, according to CNN.

GameStop kept building its position anyway. The company directly owns 4.3 million eBay shares and holds options tied to another 39 million, according to a Reuters report, giving Cohen leverage regardless of whether a deal ever closes.

Brandon Bell &sol Getty Images

Tuesday’s vote wasn’t really about the board

All five GameStop directors were re-elected Tuesday, and shareholders approved executive pay and the company’s auditor, according to a Seeking Alpha report.

Those items were never in doubt. The share count was the one that mattered.

The approved amendment expands GameStop’s authorized Class A common stock to 2.5 billion shares, according to Proactive. That gives the company room to issue new stock as currency in an eBay deal without asking shareholders again.

Final results, with the exact new share ceiling, go to the SEC in a Form 8-K.

The stock didn’t celebrate. GameStop (GME) closed Tuesday down 2.46% at roughly $22.20, per the Seeking Alpha report, before edging up about 0.5% in after-hours trading once the vote results posted.

Shares slipped further in early Wednesday trading, changing hands near $22.10, according to data from TheStreet. A capital structure fix doesn’t move a stock the way a signed merger agreement would.

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A retail survival plan that depends on someone else’s company

GameStop’s two stories are really one story. The disc business that funded the company for two decades is winding down on a fixed date, and collectibles alone won’t replace it at scale.

The eBay bid is Ryan Cohen’s answer to that math, a bet that owning a marketplace matters more than owning shelf space.

Tuesday’s vote didn’t buy eBay. It bought GameStop the paperwork to make an offer eBay’s board can’t dismiss on financing grounds alone.

Whether that’s enough to get a deal done, or just extends a standoff already three months old, is the question GameStop still has to answer.

Related: PlayStation is walking away from something gamers grew up on