[mweberxyz]

It's just normal selling.

If I borrow a game from my friend in order to sell it to GameStop, anticipating the re-sale price will be lower then the trade in price, so I can give the game back to my friend and take a profit -- would be like short selling.

[mortehu]

That's a specific type of shorting. In financial markets you can also enter swap agreements, or sell futures or call options. The key is that GameStop seeks to profit from price depreciation.

Just for fun we could imagine GameStop seeks to buy back every game it sells, and that games don't intrinsically decay because they're digital and the packaging is worth zero.

Come to think of it, if games are pre-ordered it's even closer to what could reasonably be considered a short.