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Former GameStop customers in a moderately sized Midwestern city are becoming very protective of a large window poster of Master Chief, standing nearly a year and a half after the retail store’s permanent closure. It’s not uncommon for communities to see their local GameStop stores shut down, but it seems for many, having Halo‘s protagonist constantly watching over them from a window provides some comfort.
At its peak in 2015, GameStop operated nearly 6,700 stores across North America, Europe, and Australia, according to an annual report from the company, with nearly half of them located within the United States. Since then, however, GameStop has been closing a significant number of stores over the years, and the current total stands at less than half the figure reported by the company a decade ago.
The GameStop store in this case was located in the suite at the corner of Lincoln Way and Grand Avenue in Ames, Iowa, a city of about 66,000 people located about 30 miles north of Des Moines. The location was shut down permanently on January 18, 2024, with no specific reason given for its closure, according to the Ames Tribune, and it still has not been filled by a replacement tenant. However, one member of the Halo community on Facebook recently shared an image showing that a massive vinyl poster of the Halo universe’s Master Chief, which had been taking up a block of eight windows before the store’s closure, is still there, and «boots on the ground» have confirmed it.
Master Chief Stands Vigil at GameStop 18 Months After Store Closure
Seeing the poster still adorning the window of a long-closed GameStop location has elicited mixed emotions from the community, both in Ames and abroad. Multiple Facebook users have vowed to visit the building and conduct photo shoots in front of the poster while suited up as Master Chief in realistic costumes, and one shared a photo showing that he has already done so. Others have lamented the GameStop location’s closing, but have been given some solace from the helmeted visage of Master Chief still standing watch over the former game store.
Maintaining physical stores has been a problem for GameStop for a number of reasons, but the rise in digital downloads has made the selling of physical games a much harder business model to operate under, and its leadership is looking into other sources of revenue that could keep more stores from shutting down for good. At an annual meeting held in June, it was announced that GameStop would focus more on trading card sales, a medium that has helped the company to have its first profitable opening quarter in more than half a decade. Some of the company’s other recent business decisions have been much more controversial, like its decision to invest $500 million in bitcoin, which resulted in a 10 percent drop in GameStop stock in May.
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