Ryan Cohen tried to fund an acquisition he can’t afford by selling what seem to be games from the publication’s ‘Vault’
Yesterday, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen announced that he was selling a bunch of stuff on eBay to try to fund the Funko Pop store’s proposed $56 billion bid for the online reseller site. The stunt follows criticisms that the executive doesn’t have enough cash to actually make that acquisition. But it appears that at least some of the items being auctioned could be remnants looted from the legendary Game Informer Vault, where the long-running publication housed decades of video game history before GameStop shut down the publication in 2024.
Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi posted on Bluesky accusing Cohen of selling off items from the Vault. Though Game Informer has since returned as a print publication after the outlet was acquired and revived by Gunzilla Games in 2025, the Vault and all the contents found inside remained GameStop property.
Sources close to the situation who spoke under the condition of anonymity told Kotaku that while some of the products in Cohen’s eBay listings, such as the baseball cards, weren’t from the Game Informer Vault, other items, including some rare retro games, likely were. Some details like the sticky tab on the front of the sealed copy of Dracula for the NES and the sealed casings on copies of Yoshi’s Cookie and F1 Pole Position match photos and descriptions from the Vault verified by Kotaku.
“It’s easy to remember the sealed games we had because I was always fascinated how they were never opened and too afraid to break the seal to play them despite being allowed to,” a former employee told Kotaku. “Game Informer editorial treated the Vault like a library, not like a collection to be auctioned off.”
One item that sources were not able to verify, however, was the Fallout 4 Vault Boy statue, as it’s entirely possible that GameStop stores may have had these statues on location. However, a similar statue appears in MinnMax‘s goodbye tour of the Game Informer office, and was sent to other outlets like IGN back when the game launched in 2015.
“I’m very happy Game Informer is out from under GameStop, but choices like these remind people of the brutal closure of the magazine in 2024,” MinnMax founder and ex-Game Informer video producer Ben Hanson said in a statement to Kotaku. “Game Informer‘s history belongs in a museum, not some schmuck’s eBay listings. Show some love to the current Game Informer crew, subscribe to the physical magazine, and please try to ignore Ryan Cohen’s pleas for attention.”
I have been suspended from eBay pic.twitter.com/0vadYCQ6KE
— Ryan Cohen (@ryancohen) May 7, 2026
At around 11:19 p.m. Eastern last night, Cohen posted on X that he had been suspended from eBay because the site had noted “activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk,” though the support email doesn’t get anymore specific than that.
GameStop did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
