On December 8, 2021, GameStop published their quarterly financial results for Q3 2021, and in the 10-Q form there is the line:

As of October 30, 2021, 5.2 million shares of our Class A common stock were directly registered with our transfer agent, ComputerShare.

This was the first such quarterly financial document from GameStop that mentioned directly registered shares. For the proponents of DRS among GameStop investors on superstonk and elsewhere, this was majorly validating. Here’s a thread about that.

Up until this point, DRS was a relatively novel idea that was only really discussed online among GameStop investors, and didn’t have really any genuine validation from a credible prominent source, perhaps except from Susanne Trimbath if she is considered prominent. On superstonk and elsewhere it was an idea that was also accompanied by a great amount of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, as well as other competing ideas / narratives.

For example, around this time there was a growing contingent of investors within superstonk following the influence of reddit user gherkinit. For the reasons that: he was influential (perhaps you could say an “influencer” of sorts) because he was a prominent poster within the subreddit, and ran a for-profit YouTube channel, and was using Superstonk to recruit an audience, and was largely focused on technical analysis and short-term price movements of the stock, AND, perhaps most notably, was also generally anti-DRS when prompted, that antagonism towards this individual and his followers started to grow within the community. Here’s a thread about that.

By reporting the number of shares that had been directly registered up to that point, this was confirmation from the very company itself that the number of directly registered shares of GME is information that is worth publishing for all to know, including the investor hivemind. If this information was not important or worthwhile, they wouldn’t be publishing it. This arguably solidified the consensus of the idea that DRS, true share ownership, was an important and worthwhile endeavor for GME investors, and was a major victory for DRS proponents in the ever-present competition of information and ideas.

It had been 314 days since that fateful day on January 28, 2021, when incumbent institutions, upon finding themselves in an unwinnable position within their own game, dramatically deployed the financial market chicanery of turning off the buy button for GME and other stocks. GameStop investors were cheated out of a legitimate investing victory that was based on a valid thesis and incredible momentum in the market. After 314 days of the hive mind investigating and learning and discussing this dramatic situation, hundreds of thousands of individual investors responded by wielding a newfound tool, with the consensus that shares of GME that they paid for with their own money should be owned by them, and that the action of directly registering those shares with GameStop’s transfer agent (Computershare) was required in order to obtain true share ownership.

TLDR: This day marked a significant victory for GameStop investors and an escalation of the high stakes financial clash that is happening between GameStop investors and all of their opponents.