Agreed. There's a good reason why so many of these hedge funds held short positions -- $GME is a business facing significant headwinds beyond what you'd see from the pandemic and a typical P&L statement:
- Their primary product is used game sales, and the biggest players in that sector are making active moves against such sales (see: the disc-less PS5 and Xbox Series S consoles).
- Digital storefronts make purchasing new games much, much easier (and a borderline impulse purchase).
- Free-to-play multiplayer games cut Gamestop out of the customer acquisition loop. The most $GME gets is a cut of any prepaid cards, but those cards are commonplace nowadays (my local chain drugstore has an end-cap with dozens of prepaid cards of various types).
- Their primary model is to lease space in malls. With the pandemic, malls are either closed or seeing substantially less foot traffic.
- Consoles are typically a big driver of purchases, but their limited availability also limits $GME's potential. That said, that can be counterbalanced by very profitable bundles made more attractive by the limited availability of unbundled consoles.
I don't play the stock market, but even if I did, $GME wouldn't be something I'd look at in a buy-and-hold strategy.