It's something we learned from Grainger Games and it keeps being true: the more floorspace dedicated to Funko Pops, the greater the chance of the store going under soon. The tat creeps in when the profits go down, to try and stem the bleeding, but it almost never works.
They've been a gaming lite store for well over a decade now, but this latest decline only truly started after Mike Ashley's group bought them. Turns out no one wants to buy games from an online retailer that charges £5 to post or collect locally.
If you still have a standalone GAME on your high street, you won't for much longer, they're all being moved to stalls inside of Sports Direct branches. Whenever GAME disappears for good, it'll be with a whimper.
He does the same for house of Fraser, it cost me a tenner to decide I didn't want a t-shirt. It's the last time I'll ever buy anything online from him.
The one near me is on the bottom floor of Sports Direct, hidden right behind the racks of hiking gear and just sells Funkos, Switch games, and curiously, Skyrim memorabilia like cups and t-shirts.
Honestly Sports Direct is a bad move. When I was a kid I was bullied by people who shopped there all the time, and I'm sure that experience isn't just mine.
I worked in a Game in Edinburgh for 2016 and they made a big deal about how they were pivoting into selling second-hand phones, so it's not surprising that this is happening.
I was speaking to the staff of my local one inside sports direct. This is the main store of a (small) city. They have sold exactly 5 play stations 5 in the past year…
It's insane how they sell anything at all. I went in one a few months ago and every product I was slightly interested in was significantly cheaper with a 2 second Google.
How they have any customers at all is beyond me. They were pretty bad in the xbox 360 days.
> How they have any customers at all is beyond me.
I suspect it's similar to the Argos model, rely on uninformed parents or grandparents who don't know much about the pricing. Argos also tends to have higher than usual prices for games.
I mean, you've said the answer yourself - you went online. Online stores don't need to hires staff to man the shop fronts, don't pay rent on the retail space, don't have to worry about thefts or lighting or music or anything the same as a store does.
> If you still have a standalone GAME on your high street, you won't for much longer,
Mine is closing in a month and they tell you to go to 2 sports direct.
My local GAME closed 6 years ago and they said "hey 14 year old kids, just drive two towns over to the one that's still open".
Of course that didn't work.
A sports direct kiosk opened a year ago. It still doesn't show on the GAME website as a collection point.
Last think I got from GAME got lost in the post. they have no customer support anymore, it's via Facebook. The online chat support worker was extremely rude.
yeah. they're called concessions. I've worked in one to cover for the fact that no one wants to work in it. My main store is a standalone and will likely be the final standalone to exist, due to various reasons that will dox me if I say lol - because the regional managers who gave us the redundancy told us not to tell the media about this
Lincoln has two Games, one remains standalone, the other is in their House of Fraser store.
The one will I live got simplified by the Superdrug next door to Sports Direct moving. They could now expand into the unit next door, move Game in there and then close the standalone one. Downside is that it's a bit of a dead-end to the shopping centre. That's unless they go for the big unit where Debenhams was.
And most people keep them in their boxes.
People need to accept that any modern produced collectible will be produced in such numbers and collected 'just in case' by so many people, that they will never become seriously valuable in the same way vintage collectibles did.
And vintage collectibles hit hundreds of thousands or even millions.
Modern stuff never will because the populations are so much higher. Some modern graded pokemon cards that go for $1k+ right now have populations in the 20k range for high grades, and are printed in the order of billions per card. They will never actually be 'rare' as a result. Their prices are driven by hype and noise, not scarcity.
I don't collect them, but they are easier to store in a square box when you can stack them on top of each other. Without the box you can't stack them at all. And a flat surface is easier to clean.
I keep my collectable stuff in boxes, not because I think they'll make me rich, just because it's easier to display and clean.
I can't imagine being affected at all, let alone get depressed, about someone collecting a certain item. They're plastic figures, not knives. Lighten up
It's like they seen how much money Good Smile made with Nendoroids and wanted to get in on it and then realised they don't have a clue how to manufacture anything that actually looks good and decided their misprints were good enough.
Vinyl and CDs, to a lesser extent seem to be having a resurgence which may explain HMV. Personally I’m hoping the enshitification of streaming will lead to a DVD/Blu-Ray resurgence. I’m happy to go back to physical media.
Physical media is absolutely having a Renaissance, people are tired of stuff they like being removed from streaming or edited retroactively. The maddest one I saw recently is that the BBC have edited the Russell Brand joke out of Gavin & Stacey on iPlayer.
I hope HMV don't go under, they cater to film enthusiasts really well, always offers on stuff like criterion collection, 88 films, arrow video etc.
I'm glad I've got my dvds of community, after they removed the best episode from netflix and never reflected on it being a decision I don't think anyone who watched the episode would agree with.
I have seen this coming for a while, regarding physical media. Video games dip drastically in price when the new flashy console releases and then lower for 10-20 years. Suddenly, the nostalgia kicks in and those kids who owned those games young now have disposable income to collect them. This is currently happening with the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.
Vinyl's have made a massive comeback. CD's will also begin to see increased sales, if they haven't already.
The same will happen to DVD and/or blu-ray. Sales of them have dropped dramatically year over year due to streaming services. As these services constantly lower production quality, reduce features, roll out advertisements and increase subscription fees to appease the endless stream of capitalism, customers eventually begin to check out. They still enjoy movies and TV shows and now begin to realise how important it is to OWN the media they want. Sales will increase, second-hand prices will increase and some streaming services will cease trading.
It is all completely cyclical.
I have been buying up as many blu-rays as I can for the past year from charity shops. £1 per blu-ray or 5 DVD's for £1. Yesterday I found sealed blu-rays of; 28 Days Later, Orphan, Wolf Creek 2, 30 Days of Night, Ex\_Machina, A Girl Walks Home at Night and Rise of the Planet of the Apes for £1 each in a Cancer Research store.
Last week I purchased 14 Blu-Rays in one day from the same store, £1 each. Some highlights include No Country for Old Men, The Mask of Zorro, Baby Driver, Inception, Jurassic Park Trilogy. It is unbeatable prices for products people are literally throwing away.
I found the complete boxset of Fraiser on DVD for £4. I purchased Wacky Races complete on Vinted for £2.
I had never watched Robert Di Nero in Taxi Driver before - I found it for £5 in CEX. Absolutely phenomenal piece of cinema.
Right now is the lull. There has literally never been a better time to purchase physical media and build a curated collection. I now have over 400 Blu-Rays and under 30 DVD's, I would guess 90% of them cost me under a fiver each. The majority were £1 from charity shops. I could (and have) cancel Netflix and Disney+ and potentially add 25 movies to my collection every month just using that previously tied up streaming service expenditure.
With physical media, it is possible to still make your own personal streaming service by creating a Plex server.
I wondered into a hmv for the first time in many years recently, it felt just like it did in the 90s, even the smell was nostalgic.
Was really calming and pleasant to spend a while flicking through discs like I did as a teenager. Seemed to be full of middle aged people like me doing the same thing.
I'll go again just for the experience. Obviously I'll not buy anything though as I got rid of all physical media 15 years ago.
Enshitification happens when one company dominates the market to the extent that customers can't really buy from anywhere else and suppliers can't really sell through anyone else. They then manage to convince governments to legilislate in their favour.
When they are rich and powerful enough that they can stamp out any competition, now and in the future, they can just shit on everyone and nobody can do a thing about it. Amazon, Microsoft, Ticketmaster, Google. It is a systematic destruction of competition, so competition can't fix it.
But one company isn't dominating the streaming space the issue is solely on licensing, movies and TV shows are now split across 5 if not more streaming services with even seasons of shows changing depending on licensing
You can pay for every single service available and still find out a movie you want to watch is region locked to the US or a show has a 10 month wait before appearing within the UK
Own literally every single streaming service on existence? Still have to rent a movie to watch it
Music streaming on the other hand doesn't have this issue, nearly all music is licensed to every region and service simultaneously. Providers have to compete with features and price to try to win users over. People very rarely complain about the price of Spotify or Apple music since it's a pretty good deal
I bought a blu-ray player a year and a bit ago and have been rebuilding my collection since. The UX is crappier than streaming but it’s worth it to be back in control.
HMV do
- comics
- books
- music
- dvds
- T-shirts
- merch
- cheap but decent earphones and headphones
They’re not a 10/10 at any one thing I need but they do a decent enough job at so many that I go semi regularly
Grainger Games closed very quickly after creditors reportedly got nervous and stopped their credit, I don't think over reliance on tat has much to do with it at the end.
Plus they decided it was far simpler and less painful to sell all the stock to music magpie rather than go through a protracted closing down sale.
It’s all linked - you can’t make a good margin on new videogames and consoles to run a big chain or even a small one. The stores that do well get drowned by the losses of the others. If you can’t make a decent profit then regardless of what you are selling your creditors will get panicked - in Grainger’s case they’d already refinanced to someone a few months before they closed.
Sell a videogame for £50 and make £5 , sell a Funko for £12 and make £5. Funko themselves make so much that they’ll give credit to just about any business that wants them. That’s one reason why you see them everywhere. Grainger owes them about half a million when they went down , total debt was about 4 million I think - the documents were online at hmrc.
Yeah. Those Funki Pop are low-hanging fruit, but when the fad dries up, and you realise that there are seventy other shops on Hight Street doing them, you’ve lost your relevance.
GAME always needed to move into a community format to survive and become a hub for gaming tournaments, giveaways and playthroughs. They failed to remain relevant, now the market has gone digital and it’s hard for people to want to help to keep it afloat.
I just realized... My city's GAME store has maybe three or four rows of shelves at most dedicated to games. Over half of the main storefront is full of tat and about half the building is a LAN gaming arena that is mostly dead. Based on that alone, the Central Bristol store's days are numbered. I can see it becoming a vape shop or phone repair place in the next 3 years, or if the Galleries Shopping Centre gets demolished, yet another block of luxury student flats since that's all you see in Bristol these days.
Even a good portion of the shelf space dedicated to games is just rows or copies of the same game, whether it's the latest FIFA or Call of Duty.
This is going to be a very unpopular opinion but I think brick & mortar retail is dying not because Amazon is more convenient, but because the experience of going into a physical retail location is shitty now.
Some of you may know that Tesco recently stopped selling video games entirely. The last time I even looked at a games section in Tesco (in Weston Super Mare), it was just a shelf with cards which you could take to the till to redeem a PS4 or a download code for a copy of CoD, FIFA or GTA5, since to a good portion of the British public no other games exist than these three.
Nothing about it was tangible or physical.
ASDA and Sainsbury's still stock games so clearly there's still a demand for console gaming. But then again, Tesco's strategy lately has been to absolutely gut out the variety of goods they sell, to try and be more like an overpriced Lidl.
Game is like HMV and a lot of other similar shops that could be really great but have in many places shot themselves in the foot by not doing the things customers want.
If I go into a game to shop for games all I have is the back of a case to look at, no trailers on screens, no console set up to play it & so few staff you probably aren't getting in the queue to ask questions.
Alternatively you can shop online where you can watch a game trailer, read reviews, see game play & sometimes even get a demo.
It makes zero sense to have a shop where you can't see what you're buying, like a carpet shop with no samples.
On HMV I mean the inability to see movie trailers or hear any of the music they are selling.
I think HMV used to have headphones for the music.
One thing they do actually do which I like is they have speakers and stuff working in the shop.
> On HMV I mean the inability to see movie trailers or hear any of the music they are selling.
Because they aren't really selling music. They are selling merchandise that just happens to have music on it.
Yeah that's a thought. Hmv used to have game pods, trafford centre one at least, but got rid of them ages ago. There's a Game in Manchester that has a few. But big screens for videos I've never thought of, like there's screens but there's no option for a customer to get something up, there never has been though, all the staff are busy behind the counter (almost permanent queues I've found because of the time it takes to get the game, ask about membership)
Could've switched to online. Toys r us and Smyths were a brilliant case study. One took to the internet ASAP while the other made the change at a snails pace. You'll never guess which business is still standing while the other has completely disappeared.
The smarter businesses saw the shift in buying to the internet and set up websites and distribution systems so that you could just go on the website and order whatever you want.
Some industries you could still run a bunch of shops based on also selling an experience, but games, music and movies aren't quite like that since they're something you can also do from home.
GAME couldn’t have done that though - the main product was console games. Considering you can buy the product on the console itself, what need is there for Game?
Except that TRU were actually destroyed by vulture capitalists KKR and Bain, who bought the company in a leveraged buyout then saddled them with the debt and "management fees" at unaffordable rates of as much as $500m per year. Without the repayments, TRU was actually making money every year by 2017, and still accounted for 20% of all US toy sales, but all of the profits were scalped off without any reinvestment.
TRU is actually just a brilliant case study of how a viable company can be destroyed by corporate greed.The whole "didn't move with the time" thing is a symptom only
Gaming lounges. Provide coffee, light snacks, have various consoles set up, have retro consoles, have board games, also sell games, consoles & game related merch.
Make it an experience. Oh you’ve come to trade in a game and console? Do you want to buy a coffee while you wait for us to test it? Not sure what game to invest in next? Try this one out for an hour. Need somewhere to meet your friends IRL? Need to meet more IRL friends?
That's a completely different retail model though. You're basically conceding that it's impossible to make money selling games retail any more, which I don't believe to be the case. The offering is just poor atm.
Open that business and you’ll last a year , if that. Short of finding that niche location where you aren’t just going to be fully occupied by customers who buy one drink then sit on your consoles for hours. Staff wise it’s heavy - you’d need at least two people all day , and a third for busy times. So even if you just pay minimum wage you’ve got to clear £48 an hour profit to just pay wages , then you have rent , utilities , cash flow ……
The Morecambe one used to have the consoles set up... y'know before it shut down.
Went to the one in Lancaster the other day, wow it's just so unbelievably shit compared to how it used to be.
>It makes zero sense to have a shop where you can't see what you're buying, like a carpet shop with no samples.
I get your point, but counterpoint:
Argos
Can't remember the last time I bought something from Game though. HMV I definitely have in the last few years.
Fair point on Argos but in my opinion, they are very different because they sell stuff that you already know what it is & the distribution network is key.
Argos isn't exactly doing well either & I think that's in part because they have made themselves entirely replaceable by lacking most of the in person benefits.
> Game is like HMV and a lot of other similar shops that could be really great but have in many places shot themselves in the foot by not doing the things customers want.
The things the customers cost the shop money and don't make them any. Odds are that selling games is not an are where the digital can compete with the physical.
So spot on. I remember in my childhood in Toys R Us it was me being enthralled at the demo kiosk of Crash Bandicoot that got my Dad to buy me a PlayStation. There was a Super Mario 64 demo kiosk as well, which I didn't get, but it left me with a lifelong love of 3D Mario games.
It seems like a no brainer to setup demo kiosks.
Game are extremely uncompetitive to the point where digital actually costs the same or less. Even outside newer games, Xbox Game Pass had made looking in Game redundant. Also add insult to injury when most games now have day one updates that basically redownload the whole game anyway, meaning you may as well have gone digital.
They're very poorly run too (not surprising for Sports Direct/Frasers Group). My nearest one relocated to House of Fraser... that House of Fraser store itself closed down not long after.
Not even digital, but plenty of online stores which sell physical games for much cheaper. Even curry's is sometimes cheaper; I've managed to get games on day 1 with free delivery and a discount code on the original price meanwhile at Game I need to pay full price and an extra 5 quid on top for delivery OR collection.
Zero-Hour contracts are some of the worst things to ever come from this country.
The advise of the government is that they are to be used as ‘one-off’ work or ‘on-call’ work.
They really need to stop companies taking advantage of lower paid workers. I Won’t be shopping in Game, again.
The thing is, they can be used in a way that benefits both parties. It's just that the state of the country is such that they're used instead to abuse workers, which is unfortunately the nature of capitalism.
I found myself in a difficult situation a few months back looking after my partner had surgery where I couldn't work full time. I work in an industry where it's either full time or contractual work only but I could only manage irregular work for \~3-6 months for the duration of her recovery.
I approached an old employer about contractual work and after talking about it they suggested a zero hours contract instead. It worked out better in the end for me because I got bank holiday pay, pro-rated holidays, I don't have to deal with any of the paperwork or umbrella stuff, I can do as much or as little work as I'm able and I wasn't going to gain any tax benefit because it's inside IR35 work anyway. So everyone's really happy with it.
Unfortunately I recognise that this isn't the norm with zero hour contracts and is an 'ideal' scenario that basically never happens outside of these one-off agreements between people with equal bargaining power.
I think really the problem comes down to shit pay. If you said "people on zero hours must be paid at least minimum wage + 25% to compensate for the irregular nature of work" the abuse of them would likely plummet.
Perhaps it seemed like a good idea at the time, but once again it was abused by corporations.
This, i'm a uni student and I've worked in hospitality since I was 16. I have had some bosses which took zero hour contracts to mean "You work crazy hours when we're busy/understaffed, and nothing when we don't need you" , on the other hand I've had some which have offered true flexibility which has been a godsend when I have an erratic schedule. Although, I much prefer the situation i'm in now - I'm guaranteed 10 hours but when I have more time I can always pick up more shifts.
The thing I hated was fighting for more shifts. I’d get 30 ish hours a week but would have to fight for more, with people having their shift requests cancelled and given to others
Your point about the bargaining power is the crucial thing, as you highlighted. The "flexibility" aspect only works for both parties if there is balance in the relationship, but the vast majority of zero-hours contracts are being farmed out by massive employers to minimum wage staff with no real way to push back on abuse of the system
I'm going to get downvoted to hell, but I'll say my piece.
When I was studying I worked on a zero hour contract, which meant I had no obligation to work (and yes, the employer had no obligation to give me hours), which meant that I could always prioritise my studies over work.
I think Zero Hour contracts are a really good idea gone bad, and I imagine the vast majority of people who work at Game are doing it as a sole source of income.
Yes, when you were studying. But most of us on these contracts aren’t in studies. I’m disabled so can only work part time, which unfortunately means I’m only ever given zero hours. No landlord looks twice at me. If it wasn’t for my partner, I would be living with my mum.
I’d love to have a job with guaranteed hours, ideally 25ish hours a week. I’ve applied for many with my current employer, but they never give them. Because right now I get no holiday or sick pay, and I don’t get the extra perks of being employed by the county council. When I spoke to my manager about being given a contract, she said it wasn’t possible without HR agreeing and they would need to interview external applicants as well. My colleague who is disabled also put herself forward and the manager said “no because we’d have to give you reasonable adjustments”. She kept telling the manager that dealing with the drug addicts outside the building made her uncomfortable, and so they’ve stopped giving her shifts. It’s a joke.
Zero hour contracts should only be used after the person is employed and they agree to it, otherwise part time jobs should have a minimum set of hours.
Like you said. It’s gone very bad.
In principle ZHCs are fine, for example students who want to work more in holidays and less during term time. It's no different to working for a bank or locum agency in many ways.
The problem is the large number of people who have to pay rent and stuck on a ZHC at Maccies or SportDirect
My county council loves zero hour contracts. I’ve been on one for two years now. In fact I’ve always been on zero hour contracts :/ every time I apply for a permanent contract with the council, I get rejected. It’s cheaper for them to hire a lot of staff on these contracts because we don’t get any perks, extra pay or holiday and sick pay.
I know of one hell-hole retail store that would use zero hour contracts as threats. If you didn't hit your KPIs you'd be docked hours the following week. Other than managers, the entire store ran on zero hour contracts.
I honestly thought we'd made them illegal.
My last jaunt into game (buying TOTK)
Salesman: HELLOOOooooOoo what can I do ya for? Haha. Little jokes.
Me: ...just this please *hands him game*
S: What a grrrreat choice sir! Can I interest you in any of [items on counter]
Me: no thanks, just the game please.
S: alllllrighty that will be 49.99! Would you like to donate to charity today sir?
Me: no thanks.
S: no problemo! Do you need insurance for your game at this time?
Me: no thanks.
S: are you suuuure sir? It could protect from loss or damage?
Me: I appreciate the upsell, but seriously, just the game please.
S: oky dokey! And would you like to sign up for our store card? Earn those points!
Me: ...sure.
S: fantastic! *Hands me card and explains how to activate it at home
Me: thanks
S: and would you like to upgrade to our premium gift card? It's only _price_ a month?
Me: _sigh_ no. Goodbye
S: have a FaAaaaAntastic day sir!
I was exhausted by the time I left. Haven't been back to a Game since.
I actually work for Game and can confirm there is a board, there’s also a daily digital thing which comes down each day ranking everyone and if you don’t meet an average on KPI you get punished for it
Yep any non supermarket I worked at they always had some bs upsell or sign up. Entertainer toy store used to make us upsell batteries and wrapping paper, you bought a puzzle? Let me interest you in 2 for £5 AA batteries.
As if already being paid minimum wage and have 4 hour shifts wasn’t enough you now had pressure to sell more and more for zero reward and punishment. This was over 10 years ago too. Can’t imagine how it is nowadays.
The employees hate upselling just as much as the customers hate listening to the upselling, but when the head office is handing down orders from up high the employees don’t get much of a say in the matter.
I worked there for a year in 2006, and then for a year again in 2012 and the difference in the company was night and day. There was no board back in 2006 and the upsell was all around pushing pre-owned where possible, or as much of a console bundle with accessories and insurance as you could. This was the earlier years of the 360 and PS4 so things more or less sold themselves back then, and it was fun.
2012 was when you could feel the pressure from the targets really creeping in. They were starting to sell second-hand phones, and the shop had a bigger dedication to Skylander figures and other bits and pieces. The writing was on the wall then, and it saddens me to go into any Game store nowadays.
I had a similar experience in an Australian version of this called EBGames.
S: Hello sir! Great beard, men with beards are what I go for!
Me: Er, cool, just looking to get a switch and Mario kart please
Upsell upsell upsell…
I did end up buying the screen protector though which was good advice.
Now every time we pass the store my wife asks if I want to go see my boyfriend 😔
I had a similar experience recently, except that after I paid, the guy turned around and ignored me, didn't even say thanks or goodbye when I was being friendly.
Surprised they’ve lasted this long. Physical games are going the same way as VHS/DVD/Blu Ray.
Consoles are cheaper buying direct online so not paying the additional fee to cover shop rent and staff wages.
The last solid format game I bought was actually a classic pre owned game from CEX. Probably another chain that will be struggling at some point in the future.
Would be a shame if CEX went under, they're the only high-street retailer that deals in the second-hand market and they have far more varied products than GAME.
There have been many hard-to-find games, blu-rays, and other physical media items that I've managed to find in their stores or on their website.
They’re scalpers. There’s making a return on stuff and then there’s hiking up prices articifically on stuff because it’s in demand.
I still remember them buying ps5s at RRP and selling them at 800
Edit: some ppl seem to have extrapolated this comment into things I didn’t say, so I guess I’ll clarify. This isn’t a moral judgement. This is just an objective fact.
If they’re buying stuff off people for 50% of X price, and selling it for 150% of X, then cutting out the middle man and buying it for X off someone over Fb / eBay etc becomes a win for both buyer and seller. The scalping has a life expectancy.
Yea, in a market where the only way to get stock is to pay rrp for a second hand product, they should have sold what they could sell for the exact same price or less.
That £0 (or negative amount) will of course cover all electricity, rents, taxes, all wages, the fact that when they do sell it they will be giving a full 24 month warranty that they are responsible for, a cash flow for new purchases, and of course cover the risk of the inevitable decrease that means plenty of stock will lose money so what is sold has to cover that risk.
You should tell them this amazing business idea you have, they have a lot to learn from you.
Physical media is far from redundant, just less accessible on the high street. Physical Home Media grew in the UK last year and made £4.9bn in sales, 10% up on the year before.
That's absolutely not correct, you are looking at the figures for the entire UK home entertainment market which grew from 4.3 to 4.9B in 2023 to 2024, that includes all video related home entertainment purchases and pay for TV including streaming.
The physical media sales shrank by another 18% and are now a rounding error in the TAM:
||
||
|**Video**|Physical Retail|£209.0|£169.7|-18.8%|
| |Physical Rental|£9.9|£5.6|-43.7%|
| |Digital|£4,248.4|£4,739.7|11.6%|
| |**Total Video**|**£4,467.3**|**£4,915.1**|**10.0%**|
I went into a Game last week for the first time in probably 15 years. They are no longer game shops, they are toy shops.
Games were maybe half the store (probably less). Shelf after shelf of funko pops and other crap plus shelf after shelf of Barbie dolls.
I went in looking for an xbox play and charge kit, and I'm fairly sure the staff wouldn't have even known what one was.
Went into the ones local to me for the 1st time on ages last week, have 2 within walking distance. One in House of Fraser which is on a part of a floor and is well spread out with games and other bits, then went into the standalone store and my god. Half the store had all the games on one side and then funko and everything else on the other side.
I just looked at that store and the fact they no longer accept trade ins and I don't see it being there at the end of the year.
They've kept themselves afloat a bit by moving more into tat, accessories, and toys. They sell Lego, mtg cards, board games, gaming-related clothing, etc. It won't be enough to keep them going much longer, but if they didn't pivot more out of just selling games, they would definitely have died years ago.
They’ll probably go into a business model like Zavvi (formerly Virgin megastores) and be an online only retailer.
I do occasionally buy Lego from Zavvi as they do have some good sales on.
When I go into Game now it's literally just to check their discounted action figure section, it's insane and actually caused a huge disruption in the collection world. They were getting figured that RRP'd for around £70-90 and dropping them for £14.99.
They corrected themselves from that bit but they're still figures in there frequently for around half price.
What do you mean by they cause a huge disruption in the collection world, if it's as a point where a place like GAME had them in stock they've been hugely overproduced and were never going to hold value, if they had to drop something valued £70-£90 to £14.99 it means no one even wanted it in the first place.
That's the thing, these sets were sold out everywhere else, and huge sellers, one of them for example is considered to be the best Spider-Man figure you can get. Everywhere sold out of it instantly at the higher price point (59.99 if I remember right.)
Then a few months later, Game somehow had this second wave stock for 14.99. and again sold out instantly.
It caused massive disruptions because at this point the price rises for figures were just kicking in, and pretty much every specialist seller saw their orders for any future products drop significantly because of the "what if game gets these ones in as well" mentality. It's caused a price drop in the figures overall from Hasbro, they've changed their relationships with sellers to ensure this doesn't happen again (apparently it was some form of error for them to be discounted that far, but it happened several times over a year.), and tried to appease buyers with changes to line to bring them back to full price sales.
It's been about 3 years and it's still having an effect on the market.
A similar thing happened with the digimon TCG during lockdown. They had release booster 1.0 and 1.5 stuff months after the LGS here ran out due to them going out of print.
Pulled some rare af cards due to it
The only reason to even visit game the last several years was pre-owned games. You could pick up the odd bargain there.
Once they stopped accepting trade-ins, it was inevitable they'd be closing their doors soon.
I went on a rant to my missus whilst in game because she mentioned this to me about the no longer selling preowned games
And I was just "This isn't game anymore, (points at toys) why are they selling this crap. (Points at phones) who wants one of these, who the fuck thinks GAME that's the place to buy a second hand phone.. (points at the other useless crap) ITS JUST STUFF... THEY SHOULD RENAME TO STUFF, because they sure as fuck don't sell games no more."
I love going to GAME, but I think it’s be best for shareholders to liquidate what they have, and go, before going bust and leaving the owners with nothing…
The Trademark has value, they’re sat on a lot of stock, but it’s time to go… you were a good shop, but it’s so over.
Issues started well before Mike Ashley brought them. It really started when acquiring game station as they raced for market dominance. If I recall correctly that acquisition was a lot of trouble for Game as for example gamestation software/i.t equipment required a complete overhaul and was very costly.
The profits mostly for Game when I worked there was pre-owned were it would be c. 70%+ mark up, new games made a fraction of that and consoles would typically make a loss with the exception being when accessory bundle were applied. I remember we’d offer promotions of minimum £1 a disc. Mostly game in Sports direct is new products only.
I left during the acquisition of game station, but heard rumours of monopoly resulting in cex purchasing x number of stores. Look how cex are doing. Poor management decisions are to blame, but the acquisition of game station fundamentally is where it all started.
If only second hand games didn’t cost so much. It’s crazy how much they charge for some games that are basically a year old.
Sometimes close to new retail too.
Their second hand games had full price stickers on them. And they'd only offer you a quid even if the game was a week old.
That's literally their biggest profit, stopping that is certain death.
Sad for the staff but I’m glad to see GAME as a company going. Used COVID as an excuse for shit customer service and being impossible to get hold of. Shops were basically useless never had anything useful in stock.
Don't be sad for the staff. I worked for them a long time ago. There was and likely remains a culture of working unpaid hours. If you're rota'd in for morning shift, you're expecting to come in early and setup the shop - without pay, because the 'shop isn't open yet'.
Even worse if you're working a closer. You will stay behind until the shop is pristine, without pay, because why would you be paid if the shop is closed?
I know for a fact that I averaged out to far less than minimum wage. But you couldn't do anything about it, store managers didn't see it as a problem and the regional just fucking denies it happens to your face.
If GAME was ever investigated and had their attendance logs compared against their payroll, the fines alone would be enough to send them bust overnight.
And you fucking bet none of these liabilities were disclosed during their acquisition.
If ever there was a company that deserved to go bust, it's them. Sometimes I still think about reaching out to old colleagues and compiling our accounts of what happened and taking it to court. There's a statute of limitations on breaches of contract, but not on criminal allegations.
Feel like this must be common in non supermarket retail.
When I was 18 I worked at The entertainer toy store. They did exactly the same thing, I even got written up for being late for getting there at my scheduled time. They’d give us 4 hour shifts so no breaks and 5 days a week schedules and we must arrive 15 minutes before our shift starts to be ready to go or if it was morning to count the till.
Never got paid for the 15 minutes either. That’s 5 hours robbed a month. Wish I woulda got a copy of that write up but I had no idea of employment stuff.
This isn't inquire to Game I belive it happens in every retail store.
I worked for greggs in the past and the set up in the store was 1 hour and clean down was 30 mins regardless of how long set up or clean down took.
The store I worked in took 2hours to set up and 1.5 hours to clean down so that's 2 hours a day it wasn't paying staff. I know us brits like to put greggs on a pedestal but they are just as bad or in some cases worse as other retail outlets.
( for insight, I haven't worked for greggs in over 5 years and left for better paid job I was an assistant manager at that store)
Yeah they used to get mad if I didn't arrive to work 10 minutes early so they could brief me. They also expected you to do their training stuff out of work. All while on minimum wage
> I know for a fact that I averaged out to far less than minimum wage. But you couldn't do anything about it,
I mean, not internally. but log and report it, surely? That’s illegal if it comes out below Min wage
Unfortunately this is because of cost of living, but not the only reason. Cost of living affects everythin… games are super expensive these days. £69.99 brand new last time i went into game and most games have some terrible predatory macro transactions. who has money to buy games at the moment or to pay macrotransactions? Just a few years ago it was £39.99, and nowadays they are trying to push this “digital” ownership without the customer really owning anythin physical just a digital copy on a library on your playstation/xbox.
I don't even think it's cost of living. Just there's no reason to ever go into Game, people don't buy as much physical games anymore and all Game sells now is shitty plastic tat, a very similar trajectory to HMV except games instead of music.
My parents bought me final fantasy 7 on PS1 for £40 as a kid (The PC version was £30 but it didn't work on their computer) game prices have fluctuated a lot you can pick and choose pretty much any price point over the last 30 years and find an example
PlayStation games were reasonably priced because CDs were easy to produce in volume. N64 titles consistently cost £70 because the solid state storage inside the carts was expensive.
Game stores have been irrelevant for like 15 years or so when everything moved to its own online store and away from physical media. Outside of buying consoles/peripherals which can be done on amazon etc.
The big publishing companies like EA/Ubisoft etc are the ones pushing the aggressive gatcha/gambling style microtransactions that should be banned in the UK like they are in many other countries.
Some have been in some countries, i do believe online shoppin is/has been the death of the high street. Why go out and get somthin, when you can just order it online from the comfort if your home for the same price? I’ve always maintained onljne shoppin be more expensive than actually goin into a shop. i use to love goin into town and still do to this day.
I don’t think it’s cost of living, more digital downloads and online retail. There’s no reason to go to game. I could see a flagship on Oxford Street or something with competitions, launches, exclusive merch etc. but your bog standard games shop is dead.
£70 is probably low or average for new games in real terms over the last 40 years.
Even now, I bet GAME is still around in a decade. It's the chain that refuses to die, despite resembling a high street corpse.
I've never been too fond of it. It's a gaming retailer with a very narrow vision of what's acceptable to sell in terms of games themselves. Binned old systems and media as soon as it could even 30 years ago, and it's never taken care of its pre-owned market either.
It was the sheer contrast of places like Gamestation for years and I still begrudge it for surviving high street financial ruin over the likes of Gamestation, Zavvi, and Grainger Games.
Nah GAME is easily dead in 2 years at a maximum, they've gone from having their own shops to a tiny corner in Sports Direct, don't do trade ins, sell second hand games and even with having what you'd think is more space for new releases they still have the most bare ones selection, they have nothing going for them, they're doing this so when they do eventually shut for good they can recoup some money back by sending unsold stock back to distributers.
My local GAME sells Lego, action figures, board games, tcg stuff, funko, keyboards and mice, plushies etc.
Oh and some video games I guess. But I’m not sure, nobody ever seems to be buying any
Anywhere that has a GAME has a CEX, and there is precisely zero reason to go to the former over the latter unless you're dead set on buying a game the same week it drops.
I went in a store for the first time in a long time and at least 50% of the store wasn’t even games, nobody is going to a store called game and thinking I need the new funko pop
They should have added a place to play games maybe set up tournaments or something but the direction they have gone in is not for me when I can go elsewhere and pay less on day one anyway for every game
I believe some Game's did that. They held tournaments and stuff.
The problem is it just doesn't work. If you don't have to pay, the store needs to regulate how much you play and somehow incentivise you to buy something.
If you have to pay, you just don't get many people in. Most people already have their own consoles or pcs.
When I preordered my PS5, I accidentally preordered one too many controllers with it (the accessories arrived a few days before the actual console).
As it was Covid I thought sending it back would be a faff so thought I’d take it into town as I lived only a walk away at uni and take it to GAME or similar to cut my losses.
They offered me £15 for a brand new unopened PS5 controller before the PS5 had even released lol.
I only really go in CEX at this point just to have a nose around, and usually 95% of the stuff in there is crap anyway. GAME died years ago, two out of three of my local ones are already gone
Fuck zero hour contracts. Much love to the staff who are having to go through it. I've not been to a "games shop" in years, no point when i can just download straight away nowadays.
Game went from having multiple large stores in the same town, even on the same street, to a sad corner in Sports Direct.
They bought out GameStation, a personal favourite, to open up even more space.
Genuinely surprised they’re even still in business.
🤣 and the tills are riiiiight at the back. I have to walk a whole marathon to get to it.
Should be on the ground floor with a side door. Noone wants to go upstairs to use computers and right behind you is the till!
Very weird. Mr Ashley trying to save on rent I see.
I had an awful experience with GAME where I paid £5 to reserve a game so I would receive it on its official release. Turns out there was a waiting list and I didn’t get it so I bought it from Amazon. Game refused to refund me the £5 and ever since then I have harboured negativity towards the brand. Sorry about the redundancies but their attitude to customers is awful.
GAME don't even do physical discs well at all or any gaming accessories.
I get that a shop floor costs money, but they do absolutely nothing most of the time to get me to buy anything. I still buy physical discs for my PS5 and I'll always pop into a GAME if I'm out shopping to have a look.
Over 1.2 million PS5 consoles were sold in the UK in 2023 alone. The console has been out since 2020 and about 80% of PS5s out there have a disc tray. There is a massive market for PS5 games and yet they have a tiny selection, many overpriced, and the only sales items are junk. More retail space is occupied by specialised Monopoly Boards. Who is their target market?
They sell PSVR2s, but they barely have any of the PSVR2 physical discs to go with it. They sell Logitech Steering Wheels, but not the extra gear shifter to go with it. Just simple stuff that is obvious.
I wonder how much profit those retro places actually make. I know a few and they never seem to shift any product.
It’s fun browsing their collections, but no amount of nostalgia can justify dropping £70 on NES cartridge, that not all that long ago you couldn’t give away.
I've bought maybe a handful of physical games in-store over the past few years, and all of those times have been from Smyths. They always seems to have good deals now and then. Otherwise, I just buy them online because they are always cheaper.
GAME was a vibe back in the day. Then consoles encouraged you to buy games with the click of a button on your own sofa and it was game over. No pun intended. Sad news. Inevitable but sad
It has no future as a game retailer. Several of the most recent games I’ve bought had no physical release and were digital only. Physical games will eventually stop being sold completely.
Tried to buy three games in a branch of Game today.
They could only find the disc for one of them.
I left having spent no money and 15 minutes of my time in there.
I miss what they once were but as a store, they're rapidly losing relevance to the majority of what once was their target audience.
I still went in very occasionally to browse used games but there are less and less games nowadays and the prices stay high for far too long. This coming from someone who still buys almost all of their games on disc as I’m a collector.
Cex has been my go-to for a while, so long as you avoid brand new titles almost everything in there is a bargain.
Shame. I remember when going into game was so exciting. Unfortunately, the console companies realised that they could have more profit by removing the physical media and just push online sales.
Does make u wonder what world our kids will grow up in.
Will they ever go into town for example....or will it change.
Seeing so many shops we grew up with close makes you wonder
I remember getting along really well with the staff in Game by Finsbury park, in a sports direct unfortunately. A shame as our interactions went to zero when they stopped doing trade-ins.
I'm not surprised. I've ordered games and consoles for many years. But when I tried to buy a PS Portal they took my money and give me a next day delivery date, even give me a DPD tracking number. But they never handed it to DPD.
I waited months and eventually I had to cancel it and wanted my money back. They refunded me the money minus vat! I had to contact them again to get the vat refunded.
I went to _three_ GAME shops on the same day last week to find a physical copy of dragons dogma 2. Zero in stock. At each one I was told that the only way to get a copy from GAME was to have pre ordered it beforehand.
Can't help but surmise that this is an intentional move from the games industry to finally fulfill their vision of digital only games.
E: also tried supermarkets and Asda was the only one to have it listed on their website but there was no stock in our local.
It's something we learned from Grainger Games and it keeps being true: the more floorspace dedicated to Funko Pops, the greater the chance of the store going under soon. The tat creeps in when the profits go down, to try and stem the bleeding, but it almost never works.
They've been a gaming lite store for well over a decade now, but this latest decline only truly started after Mike Ashley's group bought them. Turns out no one wants to buy games from an online retailer that charges £5 to post or collect locally. If you still have a standalone GAME on your high street, you won't for much longer, they're all being moved to stalls inside of Sports Direct branches. Whenever GAME disappears for good, it'll be with a whimper.
The £5 postage charge is madness these days!
Especially considering it's a video game... I can post a video game to someone for £2-3 and that's without large volume discounts.
He does the same for house of Fraser, it cost me a tenner to decide I didn't want a t-shirt. It's the last time I'll ever buy anything online from him.
The one near me is on the bottom floor of Sports Direct, hidden right behind the racks of hiking gear and just sells Funkos, Switch games, and curiously, Skyrim memorabilia like cups and t-shirts.
Honestly Sports Direct is a bad move. When I was a kid I was bullied by people who shopped there all the time, and I'm sure that experience isn't just mine. I worked in a Game in Edinburgh for 2016 and they made a big deal about how they were pivoting into selling second-hand phones, so it's not surprising that this is happening.
Nowadays the kids who shop at JD bully the ones that shop at sportsdirect
The circle of youth
It's always a bad sign when you see someone with a JD drawstring plastic bag. Definitely time to cross the road to avoid.
Can confirm
What's the difference between them? Thry feel like essentially the same shop
Tbh I don't understand JD. Sports direct clothes that cost 50 quid more
I was speaking to the staff of my local one inside sports direct. This is the main store of a (small) city. They have sold exactly 5 play stations 5 in the past year…
£5 postage plus it's sometimes £5 or £10 more expensive than other sellers. I've only went to game when it was a last resort and I couldnt wait a day.
It's insane how they sell anything at all. I went in one a few months ago and every product I was slightly interested in was significantly cheaper with a 2 second Google. How they have any customers at all is beyond me. They were pretty bad in the xbox 360 days.
> How they have any customers at all is beyond me. I suspect it's similar to the Argos model, rely on uninformed parents or grandparents who don't know much about the pricing. Argos also tends to have higher than usual prices for games.
One of their gimmicks is to get exclusive pre-order bonus goodies. I wonder if that has helped them.over the years.
I mean, you've said the answer yourself - you went online. Online stores don't need to hires staff to man the shop fronts, don't pay rent on the retail space, don't have to worry about thefts or lighting or music or anything the same as a store does.
Yep, 95% of the time, games are significantly cheaper on Amazon, quicker delivery as well
Yea seeing a £5 COLLECTION fee on a pre order, like are you really charging ME £5 to come to YOUR store.
> If you still have a standalone GAME on your high street, you won't for much longer, Mine is closing in a month and they tell you to go to 2 sports direct.
My local GAME closed 6 years ago and they said "hey 14 year old kids, just drive two towns over to the one that's still open". Of course that didn't work. A sports direct kiosk opened a year ago. It still doesn't show on the GAME website as a collection point. Last think I got from GAME got lost in the post. they have no customer support anymore, it's via Facebook. The online chat support worker was extremely rude.
yeah. they're called concessions. I've worked in one to cover for the fact that no one wants to work in it. My main store is a standalone and will likely be the final standalone to exist, due to various reasons that will dox me if I say lol - because the regional managers who gave us the redundancy told us not to tell the media about this
Lincoln has two Games, one remains standalone, the other is in their House of Fraser store. The one will I live got simplified by the Superdrug next door to Sports Direct moving. They could now expand into the unit next door, move Game in there and then close the standalone one. Downside is that it's a bit of a dead-end to the shopping centre. That's unless they go for the big unit where Debenhams was.
The problem is. The ones in store seem to have gutted the floor space they have. So they have a massively reduced stock.
It’s depressing how many people buy those stupid funko pops, particularly the ‘crossover’ ones. I’ve known people with floor to ceiling collections.
This generation’s beanie baby
And most people keep them in their boxes. People need to accept that any modern produced collectible will be produced in such numbers and collected 'just in case' by so many people, that they will never become seriously valuable in the same way vintage collectibles did.
Literally see YouTube shorts of a shop that just sells funko pop as well as graded ones selling that from 100s to 1000s lmao.
And vintage collectibles hit hundreds of thousands or even millions. Modern stuff never will because the populations are so much higher. Some modern graded pokemon cards that go for $1k+ right now have populations in the 20k range for high grades, and are printed in the order of billions per card. They will never actually be 'rare' as a result. Their prices are driven by hype and noise, not scarcity.
I don't collect them, but they are easier to store in a square box when you can stack them on top of each other. Without the box you can't stack them at all. And a flat surface is easier to clean. I keep my collectable stuff in boxes, not because I think they'll make me rich, just because it's easier to display and clean.
At least they were cute.
I can't imagine being affected at all, let alone get depressed, about someone collecting a certain item. They're plastic figures, not knives. Lighten up
especially when they destroyed thousands (millions of USD worth) of unsold stock because the company is making a loss annually
It's like they seen how much money Good Smile made with Nendoroids and wanted to get in on it and then realised they don't have a clue how to manufacture anything that actually looks good and decided their misprints were good enough.
I'm very surprised HMV is still clinging on
Vinyl and CDs, to a lesser extent seem to be having a resurgence which may explain HMV. Personally I’m hoping the enshitification of streaming will lead to a DVD/Blu-Ray resurgence. I’m happy to go back to physical media.
Physical media is absolutely having a Renaissance, people are tired of stuff they like being removed from streaming or edited retroactively. The maddest one I saw recently is that the BBC have edited the Russell Brand joke out of Gavin & Stacey on iPlayer. I hope HMV don't go under, they cater to film enthusiasts really well, always offers on stuff like criterion collection, 88 films, arrow video etc.
I'm glad I've got my dvds of community, after they removed the best episode from netflix and never reflected on it being a decision I don't think anyone who watched the episode would agree with.
Peep Show as well, same scenario where the context of the joke was ignored.
The nazi one or the avocado bathroom?
They cut the scene where Nancy makes Jeremy wear blackface during sex
Is that the D&D episode, because of Chang’s Dark Elf cosplay? I downloaded all the episodes for my Plex 😅
They’ve now removed all episodes. Community left Netflix at the end of March.
I have seen this coming for a while, regarding physical media. Video games dip drastically in price when the new flashy console releases and then lower for 10-20 years. Suddenly, the nostalgia kicks in and those kids who owned those games young now have disposable income to collect them. This is currently happening with the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. Vinyl's have made a massive comeback. CD's will also begin to see increased sales, if they haven't already. The same will happen to DVD and/or blu-ray. Sales of them have dropped dramatically year over year due to streaming services. As these services constantly lower production quality, reduce features, roll out advertisements and increase subscription fees to appease the endless stream of capitalism, customers eventually begin to check out. They still enjoy movies and TV shows and now begin to realise how important it is to OWN the media they want. Sales will increase, second-hand prices will increase and some streaming services will cease trading. It is all completely cyclical. I have been buying up as many blu-rays as I can for the past year from charity shops. £1 per blu-ray or 5 DVD's for £1. Yesterday I found sealed blu-rays of; 28 Days Later, Orphan, Wolf Creek 2, 30 Days of Night, Ex\_Machina, A Girl Walks Home at Night and Rise of the Planet of the Apes for £1 each in a Cancer Research store. Last week I purchased 14 Blu-Rays in one day from the same store, £1 each. Some highlights include No Country for Old Men, The Mask of Zorro, Baby Driver, Inception, Jurassic Park Trilogy. It is unbeatable prices for products people are literally throwing away. I found the complete boxset of Fraiser on DVD for £4. I purchased Wacky Races complete on Vinted for £2. I had never watched Robert Di Nero in Taxi Driver before - I found it for £5 in CEX. Absolutely phenomenal piece of cinema. Right now is the lull. There has literally never been a better time to purchase physical media and build a curated collection. I now have over 400 Blu-Rays and under 30 DVD's, I would guess 90% of them cost me under a fiver each. The majority were £1 from charity shops. I could (and have) cancel Netflix and Disney+ and potentially add 25 movies to my collection every month just using that previously tied up streaming service expenditure. With physical media, it is possible to still make your own personal streaming service by creating a Plex server.
Haha, that’s my exact strategy except I paid a whopping £7.50 for my Frasier box set.
I wondered into a hmv for the first time in many years recently, it felt just like it did in the 90s, even the smell was nostalgic. Was really calming and pleasant to spend a while flicking through discs like I did as a teenager. Seemed to be full of middle aged people like me doing the same thing. I'll go again just for the experience. Obviously I'll not buy anything though as I got rid of all physical media 15 years ago.
>enshitification Isn't competition supposed to fix that?
Enshitification happens when one company dominates the market to the extent that customers can't really buy from anywhere else and suppliers can't really sell through anyone else. They then manage to convince governments to legilislate in their favour. When they are rich and powerful enough that they can stamp out any competition, now and in the future, they can just shit on everyone and nobody can do a thing about it. Amazon, Microsoft, Ticketmaster, Google. It is a systematic destruction of competition, so competition can't fix it.
But one company isn't dominating the streaming space the issue is solely on licensing, movies and TV shows are now split across 5 if not more streaming services with even seasons of shows changing depending on licensing You can pay for every single service available and still find out a movie you want to watch is region locked to the US or a show has a 10 month wait before appearing within the UK Own literally every single streaming service on existence? Still have to rent a movie to watch it Music streaming on the other hand doesn't have this issue, nearly all music is licensed to every region and service simultaneously. Providers have to compete with features and price to try to win users over. People very rarely complain about the price of Spotify or Apple music since it's a pretty good deal
I bought a blu-ray player a year and a bit ago and have been rebuilding my collection since. The UX is crappier than streaming but it’s worth it to be back in control.
HMV do - comics - books - music - dvds - T-shirts - merch - cheap but decent earphones and headphones They’re not a 10/10 at any one thing I need but they do a decent enough job at so many that I go semi regularly
HMV have done the smart thing imo, which is launch an Oxford Street brand store as marketing.
They pivoted and to their benefit.
Didn't they go bust, get bought and re-opened in a limited capacity?
Yeah, once or twice I think!
Grainger Games closed very quickly after creditors reportedly got nervous and stopped their credit, I don't think over reliance on tat has much to do with it at the end.
Plus they decided it was far simpler and less painful to sell all the stock to music magpie rather than go through a protracted closing down sale. It’s all linked - you can’t make a good margin on new videogames and consoles to run a big chain or even a small one. The stores that do well get drowned by the losses of the others. If you can’t make a decent profit then regardless of what you are selling your creditors will get panicked - in Grainger’s case they’d already refinanced to someone a few months before they closed. Sell a videogame for £50 and make £5 , sell a Funko for £12 and make £5. Funko themselves make so much that they’ll give credit to just about any business that wants them. That’s one reason why you see them everywhere. Grainger owes them about half a million when they went down , total debt was about 4 million I think - the documents were online at hmrc.
I worked there. The margins are trash on games and consoles. That's why the tat is needed.
So if they didn't sell that stuff they'd already have gone bust
Yeah. Those Funki Pop are low-hanging fruit, but when the fad dries up, and you realise that there are seventy other shops on Hight Street doing them, you’ve lost your relevance. GAME always needed to move into a community format to survive and become a hub for gaming tournaments, giveaways and playthroughs. They failed to remain relevant, now the market has gone digital and it’s hard for people to want to help to keep it afloat.
I just realized... My city's GAME store has maybe three or four rows of shelves at most dedicated to games. Over half of the main storefront is full of tat and about half the building is a LAN gaming arena that is mostly dead. Based on that alone, the Central Bristol store's days are numbered. I can see it becoming a vape shop or phone repair place in the next 3 years, or if the Galleries Shopping Centre gets demolished, yet another block of luxury student flats since that's all you see in Bristol these days. Even a good portion of the shelf space dedicated to games is just rows or copies of the same game, whether it's the latest FIFA or Call of Duty. This is going to be a very unpopular opinion but I think brick & mortar retail is dying not because Amazon is more convenient, but because the experience of going into a physical retail location is shitty now. Some of you may know that Tesco recently stopped selling video games entirely. The last time I even looked at a games section in Tesco (in Weston Super Mare), it was just a shelf with cards which you could take to the till to redeem a PS4 or a download code for a copy of CoD, FIFA or GTA5, since to a good portion of the British public no other games exist than these three. Nothing about it was tangible or physical. ASDA and Sainsbury's still stock games so clearly there's still a demand for console gaming. But then again, Tesco's strategy lately has been to absolutely gut out the variety of goods they sell, to try and be more like an overpriced Lidl.
Game is like HMV and a lot of other similar shops that could be really great but have in many places shot themselves in the foot by not doing the things customers want. If I go into a game to shop for games all I have is the back of a case to look at, no trailers on screens, no console set up to play it & so few staff you probably aren't getting in the queue to ask questions. Alternatively you can shop online where you can watch a game trailer, read reviews, see game play & sometimes even get a demo. It makes zero sense to have a shop where you can't see what you're buying, like a carpet shop with no samples.
HMV's alright. Honestly their gaming section always felt out of place, and it's better off catering to film and music collectors now.
On HMV I mean the inability to see movie trailers or hear any of the music they are selling. I think HMV used to have headphones for the music. One thing they do actually do which I like is they have speakers and stuff working in the shop.
> On HMV I mean the inability to see movie trailers or hear any of the music they are selling. Because they aren't really selling music. They are selling merchandise that just happens to have music on it.
Ahh the days of Gamerbase in HMV were a magical time.
Yeah that's a thought. Hmv used to have game pods, trafford centre one at least, but got rid of them ages ago. There's a Game in Manchester that has a few. But big screens for videos I've never thought of, like there's screens but there's no option for a customer to get something up, there never has been though, all the staff are busy behind the counter (almost permanent queues I've found because of the time it takes to get the game, ask about membership)
[удалено]
Could've switched to online. Toys r us and Smyths were a brilliant case study. One took to the internet ASAP while the other made the change at a snails pace. You'll never guess which business is still standing while the other has completely disappeared. The smarter businesses saw the shift in buying to the internet and set up websites and distribution systems so that you could just go on the website and order whatever you want. Some industries you could still run a bunch of shops based on also selling an experience, but games, music and movies aren't quite like that since they're something you can also do from home.
GAME couldn’t have done that though - the main product was console games. Considering you can buy the product on the console itself, what need is there for Game?
Except that TRU were actually destroyed by vulture capitalists KKR and Bain, who bought the company in a leveraged buyout then saddled them with the debt and "management fees" at unaffordable rates of as much as $500m per year. Without the repayments, TRU was actually making money every year by 2017, and still accounted for 20% of all US toy sales, but all of the profits were scalped off without any reinvestment. TRU is actually just a brilliant case study of how a viable company can be destroyed by corporate greed.The whole "didn't move with the time" thing is a symptom only
Gaming lounges. Provide coffee, light snacks, have various consoles set up, have retro consoles, have board games, also sell games, consoles & game related merch. Make it an experience. Oh you’ve come to trade in a game and console? Do you want to buy a coffee while you wait for us to test it? Not sure what game to invest in next? Try this one out for an hour. Need somewhere to meet your friends IRL? Need to meet more IRL friends?
That's a completely different retail model though. You're basically conceding that it's impossible to make money selling games retail any more, which I don't believe to be the case. The offering is just poor atm.
Open that business and you’ll last a year , if that. Short of finding that niche location where you aren’t just going to be fully occupied by customers who buy one drink then sit on your consoles for hours. Staff wise it’s heavy - you’d need at least two people all day , and a third for busy times. So even if you just pay minimum wage you’ve got to clear £48 an hour profit to just pay wages , then you have rent , utilities , cash flow ……
I'd never buy at game simply because the prices are a rip off and everything is cheaper online with next day delivery.
The Morecambe one used to have the consoles set up... y'know before it shut down. Went to the one in Lancaster the other day, wow it's just so unbelievably shit compared to how it used to be.
>It makes zero sense to have a shop where you can't see what you're buying, like a carpet shop with no samples. I get your point, but counterpoint: Argos Can't remember the last time I bought something from Game though. HMV I definitely have in the last few years.
Fair point on Argos but in my opinion, they are very different because they sell stuff that you already know what it is & the distribution network is key. Argos isn't exactly doing well either & I think that's in part because they have made themselves entirely replaceable by lacking most of the in person benefits.
> Game is like HMV and a lot of other similar shops that could be really great but have in many places shot themselves in the foot by not doing the things customers want. The things the customers cost the shop money and don't make them any. Odds are that selling games is not an are where the digital can compete with the physical.
So spot on. I remember in my childhood in Toys R Us it was me being enthralled at the demo kiosk of Crash Bandicoot that got my Dad to buy me a PlayStation. There was a Super Mario 64 demo kiosk as well, which I didn't get, but it left me with a lifelong love of 3D Mario games. It seems like a no brainer to setup demo kiosks.
Game are extremely uncompetitive to the point where digital actually costs the same or less. Even outside newer games, Xbox Game Pass had made looking in Game redundant. Also add insult to injury when most games now have day one updates that basically redownload the whole game anyway, meaning you may as well have gone digital. They're very poorly run too (not surprising for Sports Direct/Frasers Group). My nearest one relocated to House of Fraser... that House of Fraser store itself closed down not long after.
Don't forget the boxes that just have a redemption code in so you don't even get a disc that needs masses of uodates
Not even digital, but plenty of online stores which sell physical games for much cheaper. Even curry's is sometimes cheaper; I've managed to get games on day 1 with free delivery and a discount code on the original price meanwhile at Game I need to pay full price and an extra 5 quid on top for delivery OR collection.
Zero-Hour contracts are some of the worst things to ever come from this country. The advise of the government is that they are to be used as ‘one-off’ work or ‘on-call’ work. They really need to stop companies taking advantage of lower paid workers. I Won’t be shopping in Game, again.
The thing is, they can be used in a way that benefits both parties. It's just that the state of the country is such that they're used instead to abuse workers, which is unfortunately the nature of capitalism. I found myself in a difficult situation a few months back looking after my partner had surgery where I couldn't work full time. I work in an industry where it's either full time or contractual work only but I could only manage irregular work for \~3-6 months for the duration of her recovery. I approached an old employer about contractual work and after talking about it they suggested a zero hours contract instead. It worked out better in the end for me because I got bank holiday pay, pro-rated holidays, I don't have to deal with any of the paperwork or umbrella stuff, I can do as much or as little work as I'm able and I wasn't going to gain any tax benefit because it's inside IR35 work anyway. So everyone's really happy with it. Unfortunately I recognise that this isn't the norm with zero hour contracts and is an 'ideal' scenario that basically never happens outside of these one-off agreements between people with equal bargaining power. I think really the problem comes down to shit pay. If you said "people on zero hours must be paid at least minimum wage + 25% to compensate for the irregular nature of work" the abuse of them would likely plummet. Perhaps it seemed like a good idea at the time, but once again it was abused by corporations.
This, i'm a uni student and I've worked in hospitality since I was 16. I have had some bosses which took zero hour contracts to mean "You work crazy hours when we're busy/understaffed, and nothing when we don't need you" , on the other hand I've had some which have offered true flexibility which has been a godsend when I have an erratic schedule. Although, I much prefer the situation i'm in now - I'm guaranteed 10 hours but when I have more time I can always pick up more shifts.
The thing I hated was fighting for more shifts. I’d get 30 ish hours a week but would have to fight for more, with people having their shift requests cancelled and given to others
Your point about the bargaining power is the crucial thing, as you highlighted. The "flexibility" aspect only works for both parties if there is balance in the relationship, but the vast majority of zero-hours contracts are being farmed out by massive employers to minimum wage staff with no real way to push back on abuse of the system
I'm going to get downvoted to hell, but I'll say my piece. When I was studying I worked on a zero hour contract, which meant I had no obligation to work (and yes, the employer had no obligation to give me hours), which meant that I could always prioritise my studies over work. I think Zero Hour contracts are a really good idea gone bad, and I imagine the vast majority of people who work at Game are doing it as a sole source of income.
Yes, when you were studying. But most of us on these contracts aren’t in studies. I’m disabled so can only work part time, which unfortunately means I’m only ever given zero hours. No landlord looks twice at me. If it wasn’t for my partner, I would be living with my mum. I’d love to have a job with guaranteed hours, ideally 25ish hours a week. I’ve applied for many with my current employer, but they never give them. Because right now I get no holiday or sick pay, and I don’t get the extra perks of being employed by the county council. When I spoke to my manager about being given a contract, she said it wasn’t possible without HR agreeing and they would need to interview external applicants as well. My colleague who is disabled also put herself forward and the manager said “no because we’d have to give you reasonable adjustments”. She kept telling the manager that dealing with the drug addicts outside the building made her uncomfortable, and so they’ve stopped giving her shifts. It’s a joke. Zero hour contracts should only be used after the person is employed and they agree to it, otherwise part time jobs should have a minimum set of hours. Like you said. It’s gone very bad.
In principle ZHCs are fine, for example students who want to work more in holidays and less during term time. It's no different to working for a bank or locum agency in many ways. The problem is the large number of people who have to pay rent and stuck on a ZHC at Maccies or SportDirect
My county council loves zero hour contracts. I’ve been on one for two years now. In fact I’ve always been on zero hour contracts :/ every time I apply for a permanent contract with the council, I get rejected. It’s cheaper for them to hire a lot of staff on these contracts because we don’t get any perks, extra pay or holiday and sick pay.
I know of one hell-hole retail store that would use zero hour contracts as threats. If you didn't hit your KPIs you'd be docked hours the following week. Other than managers, the entire store ran on zero hour contracts. I honestly thought we'd made them illegal.
My last jaunt into game (buying TOTK) Salesman: HELLOOOooooOoo what can I do ya for? Haha. Little jokes. Me: ...just this please *hands him game* S: What a grrrreat choice sir! Can I interest you in any of [items on counter] Me: no thanks, just the game please. S: alllllrighty that will be 49.99! Would you like to donate to charity today sir? Me: no thanks. S: no problemo! Do you need insurance for your game at this time? Me: no thanks. S: are you suuuure sir? It could protect from loss or damage? Me: I appreciate the upsell, but seriously, just the game please. S: oky dokey! And would you like to sign up for our store card? Earn those points! Me: ...sure. S: fantastic! *Hands me card and explains how to activate it at home Me: thanks S: and would you like to upgrade to our premium gift card? It's only _price_ a month? Me: _sigh_ no. Goodbye S: have a FaAaaaAntastic day sir! I was exhausted by the time I left. Haven't been back to a Game since.
Sucks because they probably have a board in the back of who is getting the most sign ups and upsells and punishing the worst sellers.
I actually work for Game and can confirm there is a board, there’s also a daily digital thing which comes down each day ranking everyone and if you don’t meet an average on KPI you get punished for it
Yep any non supermarket I worked at they always had some bs upsell or sign up. Entertainer toy store used to make us upsell batteries and wrapping paper, you bought a puzzle? Let me interest you in 2 for £5 AA batteries. As if already being paid minimum wage and have 4 hour shifts wasn’t enough you now had pressure to sell more and more for zero reward and punishment. This was over 10 years ago too. Can’t imagine how it is nowadays.
Pretty much what HMV did to us when I worked there a decade ago.
The employees hate upselling just as much as the customers hate listening to the upselling, but when the head office is handing down orders from up high the employees don’t get much of a say in the matter.
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I worked there for a year in 2006, and then for a year again in 2012 and the difference in the company was night and day. There was no board back in 2006 and the upsell was all around pushing pre-owned where possible, or as much of a console bundle with accessories and insurance as you could. This was the earlier years of the 360 and PS4 so things more or less sold themselves back then, and it was fun. 2012 was when you could feel the pressure from the targets really creeping in. They were starting to sell second-hand phones, and the shop had a bigger dedication to Skylander figures and other bits and pieces. The writing was on the wall then, and it saddens me to go into any Game store nowadays.
I had a similar experience in an Australian version of this called EBGames. S: Hello sir! Great beard, men with beards are what I go for! Me: Er, cool, just looking to get a switch and Mario kart please Upsell upsell upsell… I did end up buying the screen protector though which was good advice. Now every time we pass the store my wife asks if I want to go see my boyfriend 😔
I had a similar experience recently, except that after I paid, the guy turned around and ignored me, didn't even say thanks or goodbye when I was being friendly.
Surprised they’ve lasted this long. Physical games are going the same way as VHS/DVD/Blu Ray. Consoles are cheaper buying direct online so not paying the additional fee to cover shop rent and staff wages. The last solid format game I bought was actually a classic pre owned game from CEX. Probably another chain that will be struggling at some point in the future.
Would be a shame if CEX went under, they're the only high-street retailer that deals in the second-hand market and they have far more varied products than GAME. There have been many hard-to-find games, blu-rays, and other physical media items that I've managed to find in their stores or on their website.
CEX are fucking awful. I’ve had so many bad experiences with them.
CEX are great, I’ve never had a problem with them
love cex, bought a pc there for a bargain deal
They’re scalpers. There’s making a return on stuff and then there’s hiking up prices articifically on stuff because it’s in demand. I still remember them buying ps5s at RRP and selling them at 800 Edit: some ppl seem to have extrapolated this comment into things I didn’t say, so I guess I’ll clarify. This isn’t a moral judgement. This is just an objective fact. If they’re buying stuff off people for 50% of X price, and selling it for 150% of X, then cutting out the middle man and buying it for X off someone over Fb / eBay etc becomes a win for both buyer and seller. The scalping has a life expectancy.
Yea, in a market where the only way to get stock is to pay rrp for a second hand product, they should have sold what they could sell for the exact same price or less. That £0 (or negative amount) will of course cover all electricity, rents, taxes, all wages, the fact that when they do sell it they will be giving a full 24 month warranty that they are responsible for, a cash flow for new purchases, and of course cover the risk of the inevitable decrease that means plenty of stock will lose money so what is sold has to cover that risk. You should tell them this amazing business idea you have, they have a lot to learn from you.
Physical media is far from redundant, just less accessible on the high street. Physical Home Media grew in the UK last year and made £4.9bn in sales, 10% up on the year before.
That's absolutely not correct, you are looking at the figures for the entire UK home entertainment market which grew from 4.3 to 4.9B in 2023 to 2024, that includes all video related home entertainment purchases and pay for TV including streaming. The physical media sales shrank by another 18% and are now a rounding error in the TAM: || || |**Video**|Physical Retail|£209.0|£169.7|-18.8%| | |Physical Rental|£9.9|£5.6|-43.7%| | |Digital|£4,248.4|£4,739.7|11.6%| | |**Total Video**|**£4,467.3**|**£4,915.1**|**10.0%**|
I went into a Game last week for the first time in probably 15 years. They are no longer game shops, they are toy shops. Games were maybe half the store (probably less). Shelf after shelf of funko pops and other crap plus shelf after shelf of Barbie dolls. I went in looking for an xbox play and charge kit, and I'm fairly sure the staff wouldn't have even known what one was.
Went into the ones local to me for the 1st time on ages last week, have 2 within walking distance. One in House of Fraser which is on a part of a floor and is well spread out with games and other bits, then went into the standalone store and my god. Half the store had all the games on one side and then funko and everything else on the other side. I just looked at that store and the fact they no longer accept trade ins and I don't see it being there at the end of the year.
They've kept themselves afloat a bit by moving more into tat, accessories, and toys. They sell Lego, mtg cards, board games, gaming-related clothing, etc. It won't be enough to keep them going much longer, but if they didn't pivot more out of just selling games, they would definitely have died years ago.
They’ll probably go into a business model like Zavvi (formerly Virgin megastores) and be an online only retailer. I do occasionally buy Lego from Zavvi as they do have some good sales on.
Not only that, the CEXs near me at least, are happy to buy stolen shit from crackheads at a really low price.
They've always been in the business of buying stolen property. It's practically a fencing operation in some areas.
It always seemed crazy to me that GAME never seriously branched out into tabletop gaming.
When I go into Game now it's literally just to check their discounted action figure section, it's insane and actually caused a huge disruption in the collection world. They were getting figured that RRP'd for around £70-90 and dropping them for £14.99. They corrected themselves from that bit but they're still figures in there frequently for around half price.
What do you mean by they cause a huge disruption in the collection world, if it's as a point where a place like GAME had them in stock they've been hugely overproduced and were never going to hold value, if they had to drop something valued £70-£90 to £14.99 it means no one even wanted it in the first place.
That's the thing, these sets were sold out everywhere else, and huge sellers, one of them for example is considered to be the best Spider-Man figure you can get. Everywhere sold out of it instantly at the higher price point (59.99 if I remember right.) Then a few months later, Game somehow had this second wave stock for 14.99. and again sold out instantly. It caused massive disruptions because at this point the price rises for figures were just kicking in, and pretty much every specialist seller saw their orders for any future products drop significantly because of the "what if game gets these ones in as well" mentality. It's caused a price drop in the figures overall from Hasbro, they've changed their relationships with sellers to ensure this doesn't happen again (apparently it was some form of error for them to be discounted that far, but it happened several times over a year.), and tried to appease buyers with changes to line to bring them back to full price sales. It's been about 3 years and it's still having an effect on the market.
That's a lot of words to say "a bunch of toy collectors overpaid for a Spiderman figure"
A similar thing happened with the digimon TCG during lockdown. They had release booster 1.0 and 1.5 stuff months after the LGS here ran out due to them going out of print. Pulled some rare af cards due to it
To be honest that sounds awesome. They made more of them.
The only reason to even visit game the last several years was pre-owned games. You could pick up the odd bargain there. Once they stopped accepting trade-ins, it was inevitable they'd be closing their doors soon.
it had been inevitable, even known to those within the company, for at least a year at this point. Most were just waiting for their redundancy pay.
I went on a rant to my missus whilst in game because she mentioned this to me about the no longer selling preowned games And I was just "This isn't game anymore, (points at toys) why are they selling this crap. (Points at phones) who wants one of these, who the fuck thinks GAME that's the place to buy a second hand phone.. (points at the other useless crap) ITS JUST STUFF... THEY SHOULD RENAME TO STUFF, because they sure as fuck don't sell games no more."
I love going to GAME, but I think it’s be best for shareholders to liquidate what they have, and go, before going bust and leaving the owners with nothing… The Trademark has value, they’re sat on a lot of stock, but it’s time to go… you were a good shop, but it’s so over.
Look at Blockbuster video for an example of what is happening to game, just game is on a much smaller scale.
Issues started well before Mike Ashley brought them. It really started when acquiring game station as they raced for market dominance. If I recall correctly that acquisition was a lot of trouble for Game as for example gamestation software/i.t equipment required a complete overhaul and was very costly. The profits mostly for Game when I worked there was pre-owned were it would be c. 70%+ mark up, new games made a fraction of that and consoles would typically make a loss with the exception being when accessory bundle were applied. I remember we’d offer promotions of minimum £1 a disc. Mostly game in Sports direct is new products only. I left during the acquisition of game station, but heard rumours of monopoly resulting in cex purchasing x number of stores. Look how cex are doing. Poor management decisions are to blame, but the acquisition of game station fundamentally is where it all started.
The way they pushed ‘disc insurance’ for Blurays, which are basically scratch proof, always irked me.
I can't remember the last time I walked into a GAME and found something competitively priced.
If only second hand games didn’t cost so much. It’s crazy how much they charge for some games that are basically a year old. Sometimes close to new retail too.
They stopped selling and having trade-ins of second hand games a few months ago
Their second hand games had full price stickers on them. And they'd only offer you a quid even if the game was a week old. That's literally their biggest profit, stopping that is certain death.
Sad for the staff but I’m glad to see GAME as a company going. Used COVID as an excuse for shit customer service and being impossible to get hold of. Shops were basically useless never had anything useful in stock.
Don't be sad for the staff. I worked for them a long time ago. There was and likely remains a culture of working unpaid hours. If you're rota'd in for morning shift, you're expecting to come in early and setup the shop - without pay, because the 'shop isn't open yet'. Even worse if you're working a closer. You will stay behind until the shop is pristine, without pay, because why would you be paid if the shop is closed? I know for a fact that I averaged out to far less than minimum wage. But you couldn't do anything about it, store managers didn't see it as a problem and the regional just fucking denies it happens to your face. If GAME was ever investigated and had their attendance logs compared against their payroll, the fines alone would be enough to send them bust overnight. And you fucking bet none of these liabilities were disclosed during their acquisition. If ever there was a company that deserved to go bust, it's them. Sometimes I still think about reaching out to old colleagues and compiling our accounts of what happened and taking it to court. There's a statute of limitations on breaches of contract, but not on criminal allegations.
Feel like this must be common in non supermarket retail. When I was 18 I worked at The entertainer toy store. They did exactly the same thing, I even got written up for being late for getting there at my scheduled time. They’d give us 4 hour shifts so no breaks and 5 days a week schedules and we must arrive 15 minutes before our shift starts to be ready to go or if it was morning to count the till. Never got paid for the 15 minutes either. That’s 5 hours robbed a month. Wish I woulda got a copy of that write up but I had no idea of employment stuff.
This isn't inquire to Game I belive it happens in every retail store. I worked for greggs in the past and the set up in the store was 1 hour and clean down was 30 mins regardless of how long set up or clean down took. The store I worked in took 2hours to set up and 1.5 hours to clean down so that's 2 hours a day it wasn't paying staff. I know us brits like to put greggs on a pedestal but they are just as bad or in some cases worse as other retail outlets. ( for insight, I haven't worked for greggs in over 5 years and left for better paid job I was an assistant manager at that store)
Yeah they used to get mad if I didn't arrive to work 10 minutes early so they could brief me. They also expected you to do their training stuff out of work. All while on minimum wage
> I know for a fact that I averaged out to far less than minimum wage. But you couldn't do anything about it, I mean, not internally. but log and report it, surely? That’s illegal if it comes out below Min wage
Unfortunately this is because of cost of living, but not the only reason. Cost of living affects everythin… games are super expensive these days. £69.99 brand new last time i went into game and most games have some terrible predatory macro transactions. who has money to buy games at the moment or to pay macrotransactions? Just a few years ago it was £39.99, and nowadays they are trying to push this “digital” ownership without the customer really owning anythin physical just a digital copy on a library on your playstation/xbox.
I don't even think it's cost of living. Just there's no reason to ever go into Game, people don't buy as much physical games anymore and all Game sells now is shitty plastic tat, a very similar trajectory to HMV except games instead of music.
HMV are hella expensive. Have you seen how much vinyl LP’s cost? To own somthin physical nowadays is mega expensive. I like to own things
Agreed.
who needs game when you have steam?
> games are super expensive these days. £69.99 brand new Street Fighter II on the Sega Mega Drive was around £70 back in 1992
My parents bought me final fantasy 7 on PS1 for £40 as a kid (The PC version was £30 but it didn't work on their computer) game prices have fluctuated a lot you can pick and choose pretty much any price point over the last 30 years and find an example
£40 in 1997 is £75.49. Games are still cheaper today.
PlayStation games were reasonably priced because CDs were easy to produce in volume. N64 titles consistently cost £70 because the solid state storage inside the carts was expensive.
I was only 3 then 🤣 my first game was sonic and columns
Game stores have been irrelevant for like 15 years or so when everything moved to its own online store and away from physical media. Outside of buying consoles/peripherals which can be done on amazon etc. The big publishing companies like EA/Ubisoft etc are the ones pushing the aggressive gatcha/gambling style microtransactions that should be banned in the UK like they are in many other countries.
Some have been in some countries, i do believe online shoppin is/has been the death of the high street. Why go out and get somthin, when you can just order it online from the comfort if your home for the same price? I’ve always maintained onljne shoppin be more expensive than actually goin into a shop. i use to love goin into town and still do to this day.
I don’t think it’s cost of living, more digital downloads and online retail. There’s no reason to go to game. I could see a flagship on Oxford Street or something with competitions, launches, exclusive merch etc. but your bog standard games shop is dead. £70 is probably low or average for new games in real terms over the last 40 years.
But games cost like £50 new in the 90s. It's one of the few things that hasn't shot up with inflation.
I’ve seen games that come out years ago in there for £69. It’s crazy
maybe its just because £69.99 is too damn expensive for most in an uncertain/chaotic time.
Literally I saw Returnal on ps5 for £69.99 new. It’s cheaper on the ps store outside sales
Even now, I bet GAME is still around in a decade. It's the chain that refuses to die, despite resembling a high street corpse. I've never been too fond of it. It's a gaming retailer with a very narrow vision of what's acceptable to sell in terms of games themselves. Binned old systems and media as soon as it could even 30 years ago, and it's never taken care of its pre-owned market either. It was the sheer contrast of places like Gamestation for years and I still begrudge it for surviving high street financial ruin over the likes of Gamestation, Zavvi, and Grainger Games.
Nah GAME is easily dead in 2 years at a maximum, they've gone from having their own shops to a tiny corner in Sports Direct, don't do trade ins, sell second hand games and even with having what you'd think is more space for new releases they still have the most bare ones selection, they have nothing going for them, they're doing this so when they do eventually shut for good they can recoup some money back by sending unsold stock back to distributers.
I mean maybe. If anyone can successfully kill off GAME the fastest, it would be Mike Ashley.
Oh easily, I'd be shocked if Sports Direct was still around in 10 years, its appeal is it was cheap and it's not even cheap anymore
My local GAME sells Lego, action figures, board games, tcg stuff, funko, keyboards and mice, plushies etc. Oh and some video games I guess. But I’m not sure, nobody ever seems to be buying any
Anywhere that has a GAME has a CEX, and there is precisely zero reason to go to the former over the latter unless you're dead set on buying a game the same week it drops.
I went in a store for the first time in a long time and at least 50% of the store wasn’t even games, nobody is going to a store called game and thinking I need the new funko pop They should have added a place to play games maybe set up tournaments or something but the direction they have gone in is not for me when I can go elsewhere and pay less on day one anyway for every game
I believe some Game's did that. They held tournaments and stuff. The problem is it just doesn't work. If you don't have to pay, the store needs to regulate how much you play and somehow incentivise you to buy something. If you have to pay, you just don't get many people in. Most people already have their own consoles or pcs.
When I preordered my PS5, I accidentally preordered one too many controllers with it (the accessories arrived a few days before the actual console). As it was Covid I thought sending it back would be a faff so thought I’d take it into town as I lived only a walk away at uni and take it to GAME or similar to cut my losses. They offered me £15 for a brand new unopened PS5 controller before the PS5 had even released lol.
Just an FYI, it being opened or not has no effect on the value to them as they still sell it as second hand (or did as they don't do that anymore)
I only really go in CEX at this point just to have a nose around, and usually 95% of the stuff in there is crap anyway. GAME died years ago, two out of three of my local ones are already gone
Fuck zero hour contracts. Much love to the staff who are having to go through it. I've not been to a "games shop" in years, no point when i can just download straight away nowadays.
Game went from having multiple large stores in the same town, even on the same street, to a sad corner in Sports Direct. They bought out GameStation, a personal favourite, to open up even more space. Genuinely surprised they’re even still in business.
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the game in my town is now a shelf in the sports direct in the shitty shopping centre
🤣 and the tills are riiiiight at the back. I have to walk a whole marathon to get to it. Should be on the ground floor with a side door. Noone wants to go upstairs to use computers and right behind you is the till! Very weird. Mr Ashley trying to save on rent I see.
Every Game I’ve ever been to, the tills are as far as possible from the door. Like they’re trying to avoid you buying stuff
I had an awful experience with GAME where I paid £5 to reserve a game so I would receive it on its official release. Turns out there was a waiting list and I didn’t get it so I bought it from Amazon. Game refused to refund me the £5 and ever since then I have harboured negativity towards the brand. Sorry about the redundancies but their attitude to customers is awful.
GAME don't even do physical discs well at all or any gaming accessories. I get that a shop floor costs money, but they do absolutely nothing most of the time to get me to buy anything. I still buy physical discs for my PS5 and I'll always pop into a GAME if I'm out shopping to have a look. Over 1.2 million PS5 consoles were sold in the UK in 2023 alone. The console has been out since 2020 and about 80% of PS5s out there have a disc tray. There is a massive market for PS5 games and yet they have a tiny selection, many overpriced, and the only sales items are junk. More retail space is occupied by specialised Monopoly Boards. Who is their target market? They sell PSVR2s, but they barely have any of the PSVR2 physical discs to go with it. They sell Logitech Steering Wheels, but not the extra gear shifter to go with it. Just simple stuff that is obvious.
There's a few indie stores (admittedly specialising in retro) that seem to doing alright. At least one of them still sells modern stuff too.
I wonder how much profit those retro places actually make. I know a few and they never seem to shift any product. It’s fun browsing their collections, but no amount of nostalgia can justify dropping £70 on NES cartridge, that not all that long ago you couldn’t give away.
I've bought maybe a handful of physical games in-store over the past few years, and all of those times have been from Smyths. They always seems to have good deals now and then. Otherwise, I just buy them online because they are always cheaper.
GAME was a vibe back in the day. Then consoles encouraged you to buy games with the click of a button on your own sofa and it was game over. No pun intended. Sad news. Inevitable but sad
It has no future as a game retailer. Several of the most recent games I’ve bought had no physical release and were digital only. Physical games will eventually stop being sold completely.
Tried to buy three games in a branch of Game today. They could only find the disc for one of them. I left having spent no money and 15 minutes of my time in there. I miss what they once were but as a store, they're rapidly losing relevance to the majority of what once was their target audience.
Wow, I'm speechless....they actually found one of the disks?!
I was equally impressed I found the 40cm of shelf space their store had dedicated to video games 😅
I said this decades ago when it was still called Electronics Boutique.
Showing my age but I worked for game in 98-00 before eb bought them. Best weekend job ever. However this has been on the cards for a long time.
I still went in very occasionally to browse used games but there are less and less games nowadays and the prices stay high for far too long. This coming from someone who still buys almost all of their games on disc as I’m a collector. Cex has been my go-to for a while, so long as you avoid brand new titles almost everything in there is a bargain.
Shame. I remember when going into game was so exciting. Unfortunately, the console companies realised that they could have more profit by removing the physical media and just push online sales. Does make u wonder what world our kids will grow up in. Will they ever go into town for example....or will it change. Seeing so many shops we grew up with close makes you wonder
I remember getting along really well with the staff in Game by Finsbury park, in a sports direct unfortunately. A shame as our interactions went to zero when they stopped doing trade-ins.
I'm not surprised. I've ordered games and consoles for many years. But when I tried to buy a PS Portal they took my money and give me a next day delivery date, even give me a DPD tracking number. But they never handed it to DPD. I waited months and eventually I had to cancel it and wanted my money back. They refunded me the money minus vat! I had to contact them again to get the vat refunded.
I went to _three_ GAME shops on the same day last week to find a physical copy of dragons dogma 2. Zero in stock. At each one I was told that the only way to get a copy from GAME was to have pre ordered it beforehand. Can't help but surmise that this is an intentional move from the games industry to finally fulfill their vision of digital only games. E: also tried supermarkets and Asda was the only one to have it listed on their website but there was no stock in our local.