GameStop is the largest video game retailer in the world, with over 5,000 stores.

The company had been in steady decline for years, but the bottom has dropped out of its stock price in 2019 — from $16 a share in January to just $4 by late July.

The company is "a melting ice cube," Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter told Business Insider earlier this year. "For sure it's going to go away eventually."

We visited a handful of GameStop stores in New York City, and it was evident why the company is failing.

GameStop representatives did not respond to a request for comment as of publishing.

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When I was growing up in the late '90s, entertainment retail titans like Tower Records, Sam Goody, Waldenbooks, and Blockbuster Video were all, already, on the way out.

Their decline was clear to everyone: First, they'd start selling stuff that wasn't quite in their wheelhouse. Then the stores would start shuttering. Then the remaining stores would get messier and messier as staff saw the writing on the wall. Then, eventually, they would shutter forever.

Two decades later, and the world's largest video game retailer — GameStop — is going through the same process that record stores, movie stores, and book stores have already endured.

On a muggy summer Wednesday in New York City, we went on a tour of several GameStop stores for a look into a retailer in decline.