GAME Shutters 277 Stores, Lays Off 2,100 Employees

Sucks for the employees and the regular customers.

How are they so different than EB GameStop FunCo & Babbages that they couldn't succeed? Or more importantly, why all of a sudden now are they not doing as well of a business as they were all along? Did GameStop just open a shit ton of uk locations? Is gamefly somehow feasible in nations were the postal service ain't going to shit?

I'm from Northern Ireland, and I used to work for GAME.

All of my life has been building up to this moment: I am relevant.

@Fallen189: It's not a loophole, it's the whole point of administration. You find money to pay as many creditors as you can, but there's obviously not enough to pay everyone.

My GAME is not on the list but I didnt think it would be, Alway has a queue in there.

@brehonia: Hmm, who'd of thought the Gamestation on New Street was the flagship store? Anyway, looking at the list they say one in the Palisades is also closing, which is the shopping centre above New Street Station, right, so I guess the shitty little on in the bullring survives? That can't be right, I must of misread.

Power to the players baby yea! GS rules the world! Sign up for your power up cards playas

Those who have lost their jobs have my sympathies, of course, but I do find myself callously and selfishly wondering whether this will make the whole store-exclusive edition situation slightly less intractable, confusing and ridiculous. Not that any of that stuff should really matter, but it does play on my stupid consumer mind – the nagging voice of commercial indoctrination.

Anyway, I'm genuinely curious to see where the situation develops from here. Will Game's collapse continue, leaving a complete vacuum in the national specialist game retailer space? Will it find a buyer, and eke out a continued existence at a more reasonable size? Will one or more new chains step in? Will the independent retailers rise? Or is there no going back from this step on the road to online postal and digital distribution?

@Brackynews said:

In some ways it's good, because it means the company going under can't arbitrarily decide who gets what's owed to them, like if manager's nephew runs a carpet cleaners with $250,000 of overdue invoices.

From what I've heard, that sort of thing still totally does happen, but I suppose the administration system mitigates the incidence somewhat. I think the sort of thing that does occur is more of the "empty the safe and disappear" variety.

@brighteye said:

So not selling EA games including Mass Effect 3 was a bad business idea i guess ?

That was probably not a choice for Game, and if it was, I imagine it was one between two unsustainable outcomes. As I understand it, either they simply didn't have the money for the stock, or their situation was so dire that EA did not deem it prudent to offer them the credit terms they were asking for. And it would now appear that they were right in their judgement (although I'm sure there are arguments to be made about cause and effect).

This is sad, i lived in London for 3 years, was using GAME as my main game source. They never disappointed really. They usually delivered everything really early. Was awesome to get games as much as a day before street date.

Hope those 2000+ folks can find a new job. That's a lot of people to be without work suddenly. I just had a similar thing happen to me at my work a few weeks back. Sucks the big one.

My nearest Game store is included in the MCV list. Haven't been in there for years because of how much there prices were noticeably staying up for ages and how bad their trade-in prices were.

Shame about all the people that've lost their jobs though... Hope Gamestation stays alive as the employees there actually LIKE games and don't tend to hard-sell you on products, they just have a chat with you, even if they know you aren't going to buy anything. Sad really...

Americans probably won't understand this argument as the majority from what I've seen have their mailboxes located outside their houses.

Ordering online here in the UK means you have to be physically indoors to sign for receipt of your purchase, if you're not then they'll send the mail back to the postal depot with an added 2-3 days before you can collect it from some middle of nowhere warehouse. Presumably so they can steal all the money out of birthday cards and reseal the envelopes.

If you work a full time job this inevitably means you miss out on new games on the day of launch (unless you're lucky enough to get a non dipshit mailman who doesn't put 'can't fit through letterbox' on anything larger than a postcard so he can get off work at 1pm and spend the rest of his time buying scratch-cards or in Coral/Ladbrokes).

This is where brick and mortar stores are INVALUABLE.

The only real place left for us (considering HMV are also rapidly going down the shitter and will probably close before the end of the year too) are supermarkets. If you want anything other than the top 10 in there, you're shit out of luck son!

While GAME staff generally aren't very helpful (how helpful would you be on minimum wage with targets to meet?). I'm willing to pay the extra £5 excess over Amazon or Play just so I can get a game there and then rather than wait up-to a week and then have to pay travel expenses to pick the damn thing up from a postal depot anyway.

For this reason I sincerely hope that the remaining stores still open can find a buyer.

That or Sony stores start selling a wider range of games and Microsoft start to open similar stores to Sony and Apple therefore circumventing the need for a third party chain altogether.

So according to that MCV article, the Irish GAMEs are closed too. Need to check them on the way to work tomorrow. Two days ago they had a big sign saying "Spring Cleaning" in the window. I don't think that's accurate :/

Yeah, it seems like i got robbed...

I ordered SSX from them almost a month ago, still haven't recieved it, i was going top try and get in contact with them but it seems like there's no point now...

50 Euros...

@pawsoffury: That's an interesting perspective, but let me ask you a question. If Game is invaluable (to most people who would be really into games like yourself, where you are) then where are they buying all their games? If Game is closing, then that means that few people were shopping there, which means that there must be good alternatives for them, unless not that many are buying videogames at all in Great Britain.

@Brendan said:

@pawsoffury: That's an interesting perspective, but let me ask you a question. If Game is invaluable (to most people who would be really into games like yourself, where you are) then where are they buying all their games? If Game is closing, then that means that few people were shopping there, which means that there must be good alternatives for them, unless not that many are buying videogames at all in Great Britain.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-26-why-game-collapsed

Apparently there were bunches of GAME and GameStation stores in the UK, to the point where you could conveniently walk from one to the other. That and they expanded beyond their capacity overseas, in Portugal, Spain and Australia.

Basically it's the classic story of a successful store mismanaged into oblivion, see also K-Mart in the US.

Aside from being shitty gifts, this is another reason to not buy gift cards because this kind of thing happens way too often.

The only reason I was going to go in was to cash in the £11 on my Game card on a £30 game. I guess they don't want my money. Oh well.

@McGhee said:

Aside from being shitty gifts, this is another reason to not buy gift cards because this kind of thing happens way too often.

Heh, or at least advise people to use said cards ASAP.

Seriously though, that's just terrible, seeing UK customers getting fucked like this.

I read in the paper that RBS (a partially publicly owned bank) is looking to take over GAME or at least buy it out. I don't know how I feel about that :/

@Jimbo said:

I have this picture lying around:

Ahahaa brilliant! My local GAME closed on Saturday, went in there on the final day and everything was still too expensive.

Well, I get to find out sometime this week if I still have a job. My store is still open, for the time being. It's like a long game of Russian Roulette :(

Gamestop buying us would at least keep the pennies rolling in. Fingers crossed.

@Jimbo: I have that Transformer coke can, I won it from Burger King some 20 years ago.

@scaramoosh said:

No refunds from pre orders.........

We are offering full refunds on pre orders, actually. Instead of all the negativity, perhaps you would be so kind as to spare a thought for the poor bastards who have to process 100s upon 100s of refunds for angry customers.

I am not defending Game as a company - because fuck that - but think of the innocent people who are losing jobs.

@boyusmaximus: when they had the downstairs open with all the retro stuff it was pretty good

@CookieMonster: @CookieMonster said:

Elsewhere, EuroGamer is reporting that all remaining GAME locations have been instructed to suspend all exchanges, refunds, and gift card purchases. This includes any pre-orders that included money already put down. No refunds will be issued for those pre-order deposits at this time.

Thats fucking shitty. Are they even allowed to do that?

if a company is in administration there's not really a THEY left to do or not do, also there's no way they could refund even if they want to. On top of that if anyone wanted to take them to court that would be impossible as companies in administration also cannot be taken to court.

Leeds is closing 5(!) GAME/Gamestation stores, leaving 2 behind. 7 stores in one moderate sized city, it's nuts!

Buyouts aside, Game's business practices have been beyond incompetent and it's luck rather than judgment that's even got them as far as they have. They were bouyed by the incredible success of the Wii and the buzz that gathered as gaming "matured". If this were an American company the shareholders would be suing the board of directors right now.

People shopped there because it was called GAME, not because it was the "best" place to go. Gamers have known for nigh-on a decade that they were a bit of a sleazy place that took their own profits over their care for the customer. After they homogenised the stores following the GAME/EB buyout/merger, then they did away with the "try this game for ten days" policy, then invested heavily in trade-ins and extra insurance policies it was clear they weren't interested in actually engaging gamers. Whilst GAME were trying to attract the wider crowd Gamestation's indie feel started to boost their rankings. By the time Gamestation had become a nationwide brand (with a bit of help from Blockbuster) GAME went and bought them too, the fucks.

It'll be sad if gaming withdraws from the highstreet entirely but this isn't a "recession-led downfall of British retail", it's poor management by dodgy-arsed cunts.

Hmmm wondering the effect these events will have on GAME here in Aus

@Rewcastle said:

@scaramoosh said:

No refunds from pre orders.........

We are offering full refunds on pre orders, actually. Instead of all the negativity, perhaps you would be so kind as to spare a thought for the poor bastards who have to process 100s upon 100s of refunds for angry customers.

I am not defending Game as a company - because fuck that - but think of the innocent people who are losing jobs.

People lose jobs all the fucking time. That's no excuse to rob folks. But that's kind of GAME's favorite thing to do, isn't it?

@Rewcastle said:

@scaramoosh said:

No refunds from pre orders.........

We are offering full refunds on pre orders, actually. Instead of all the negativity, perhaps you would be so kind as to spare a thought for the poor bastards who have to process 100s upon 100s of refunds for angry customers.

I am not defending Game as a company - because fuck that - but think of the innocent people who are losing jobs.

Ithink everyone on this board feels for the employees - They gotta do what they're ordered to, after all. But there's going to be a lot of frustration in general because this is a pretty shitty move by the overlords.

@Rhythm Pretty much. Thus my comparison to K-Mart here in the United States. Hell, Blockbuster's another good US example. There's clearly still demand for physical rentals - thus why Redbox is doing so well - but Blockbuster made mistake after mistake, and it's the same situation. GAME definitely had too many stores. And yeah, the chief cause seems to be opening way too many stores, much like (ANOTHER American example) Circuit City or Ames. You can't have so many stores so close to eachother and not expect the stores to kill eachother off. They killed themselves, plain and simple, and thousands of people are going to pay the price. Unfortunately, none of those people will likely be the people who made those shit choices.

I'm sorry for all the people who lost jobs today.

I work in an indpendant music/film/game shop and we've really felt the affect of Game over the last month here in Manchester.

With Game & Gamestation all being closed we've only got HMV and ourselves within the city centre and neither of our stores can handle the demand of games. Both HMV and outselves are selling out every Friday even with bad reviews for games such as Resident Evil etc.

It's going to be interesting how this will affect the retail market. Yes online & download services are great but tbh, I've always enjoyed owning the physical copy and being able to pick it up in store or find good bargins.

Also VAT laws are changing in the UK for online retails such as Amazon. Usual you could get the game for £5 cheaper by buying off them but now the VAT will make all these cheaper deals go up to standard retail prices of around £40.

@monkeynuts8: true, that retro section was the best part of that shop.

Very sorry to see people lose their jobs, especially in this horrendous economic climate. The UK government has made it even harder for stores to survive. Seeing more and more empty high street shopfronts is a grim reminder of what's happening these days.
 
I have great memories of Game before they went down the pre-owned route. Seeing those stores evolve in that way didn't fill me with confidence... I think the final straw is when I visited a Game recently (now closed down) to see there were no first-hand sale items, just preowned items for sale. Makes no logical sense when you could get the same game for the same price/cheaper with the polythene wrapping still intact.
 
I hope they learn from this and bounce back to be a radicaly different company - because that's how they're going to have to become to survive.

@xbob42 said:

@Rewcastle said:

@scaramoosh said:

No refunds from pre orders.........

We are offering full refunds on pre orders, actually. Instead of all the negativity, perhaps you would be so kind as to spare a thought for the poor bastards who have to process 100s upon 100s of refunds for angry customers.

I am not defending Game as a company - because fuck that - but think of the innocent people who are losing jobs.

People lose jobs all the fucking time. That's no excuse to rob folks. But that's kind of GAME's favorite thing to do, isn't it?

Hah. Quoting and replying to a post which you didn't read properly. Gold.

@Rewcastle said:

@xbob42 said:

@Rewcastle said:

@scaramoosh said:

No refunds from pre orders.........

We are offering full refunds on pre orders, actually. Instead of all the negativity, perhaps you would be so kind as to spare a thought for the poor bastards who have to process 100s upon 100s of refunds for angry customers.

I am not defending Game as a company - because fuck that - but think of the innocent people who are losing jobs.

People lose jobs all the fucking time. That's no excuse to rob folks. But that's kind of GAME's favorite thing to do, isn't it?

Hah. Quoting and replying to a post which you didn't read properly. Gold.

I read it when I replied to it. I'll take the word of the company over the word of an alleged single employee claiming the complete opposite as to what has been officially reported, thanks.

well that sucks for the people with jobs. i'm sure there are places to buy games now for the UK people. there is the internet out there people.

It was a skeezy company. Good riddance.

A sad, sad day. 2,100 jobs lost - none of them top dogs. Not to mention the massive dent it will have on other retailers in the same field. Anyone who's happy that GAME has done this just isn't human - this is going to have a lasting impact on the entire retail industry, and don't think that digital and online distribution will for a second make up for the fact that so many people lost their jobs.

@Andy_117 said:

A sad, sad day. 2,100 jobs lost - none of them top dogs. Not to mention the massive dent it will have on other retailers in the same field. Anyone who's happy that GAME has done this just isn't human - this is going to have a lasting impact on the entire retail industry, and don't think that digital and online distribution will for a second make up for the fact that so many people lost their jobs.

That's the thing that gets me. Same shit happened with a lot of companies during the depths of the recession. The normal guys got fucked over and the higher-ups who ruined it got to float away on their golden parachute.

@Fantus1984 said:

I'm sorry for all the people who lost jobs today.

I work in an indpendant music/film/game shop and we've really felt the affect of Game over the last month here in Manchester.

With Game & Gamestation all being closed we've only got HMV and ourselves within the city centre and neither of our stores can handle the demand of games. Both HMV and outselves are selling out every Friday even with bad reviews for games such as Resident Evil etc.

It's going to be interesting how this will affect the retail market. Yes online & download services are great but tbh, I've always enjoyed owning the physical copy and being able to pick it up in store or find good bargins.

Also VAT laws are changing in the UK for online retails such as Amazon. Usual you could get the game for £5 cheaper by buying off them but now the VAT will make all these cheaper deals go up to standard retail prices of around £40.

Talk about your mixed blessings. I imagine any market could use more customers, but this is probably the first time the phrase "not all at once" is said in a completely serious manner. Good luck, sounds like you need it.

Can't say I'm surprised. Every time I've went and asked my local GAME if they have X or Y they've said "no, they haven't shipped any of those to us" or "we only got a few of them and we don't know when the next batch is coming if ever".

I'm not sure what Gamestop except to achieve, if they do purchase a section. From all the shitty stories I've heard or read they sound like an exact American equivalent and I always wonder why anyone would bother going there, when there are alternatives.

And in the UK we don't and now their dead.. So, GO UK!!

People losing their jobs is always bad, I just hope the people up top who actually make the decisions and essentially killed the company are added to the corporate blacklist. Those are the guys who should be unemployed. But of course its the everyman who pays the price.

I thought GAME was the UK equivalent of Gamestop. I really don't understand how this could happen, but man, I hope it happens to Gamestop too in the future. The biggest problem is that they ended up swallowing all competitors, so there's going to be a void there for gaming specialty retailers I suppose. And that does suck, UK gamers. But on the plus side, I'm sure you'll end up with something better in a year or two. There's too much money to be made.

I really hate Gamestop. I can't believe they swallowed up Funcoland (BEST GAMING STORE EVER) and Electronics Boutique. I REALLY hope this kind of thing happens to Gamestop, as gamers fall back on buying stuff online more (through Amazon), and purchasing games digitally through places like Xbox Live, Steam and Playstation Network.

@Gruff182 said:

I'm not sure what Gamestop except to achieve, if they do purchase a section. From all the shitty stories I've heard or read they sound like an exact American equivalent and I always wonder why anyone would bother going there, when there are alternatives.

And in the UK we don't and now their dead.. So, GO UK!!

People losing their jobs is always bad, I just hope the people up top who actually make the decisions and essentially killed the company are added to the corporate blacklist. Those are the guys who should be unemployed. But of course its the everyman who pays the price.

GameStop's more interested in getting GAME's Spanish and Portugese business. As for everyone's irrational hatred of them, I've never had a problem with them. Their prices are competitive and their service is prompt. Managers listen to concerns. There's nothing wrong with them, and I wish people would stop being so closed-minded because they don't like the trade-in values.

Losing your job is always shitty having the company close is even worse. hope all you game guys do ok. My local game was always good.

That's because they weren't a titan for the last few years.

They were way too late to the party for Digital Distribution, and relied upon the 2nd-hand market too much for probably too long after developers started implementing incentives against it. Their rejection of stocking Mass Effect 3 was indicative of their failure to accept the value of stock in this day and age, not EA's, and their new game prices were a joke compared to online shops, £10-15 more expensive. They were doing business as though it was still 2001.

@Monkey_Guy said:

That's because they weren't a titan for the last few years.

They were way too late to the party for Digital Distribution, and relied upon the 2nd-hand market too much for probably too long after developers started implementing incentives against it. Their rejection of stocking Mass Effect 3 was indicative of their failure to accept the value of stock in this day and age, not EA's, and their new game prices were a joke compared to online shops, £10-15 more expensive. They were doing business as though it was still 2001.

You know, considering the UK ranks 25th in European broadband penetration with only 30% of people with speeds better than 5Mbps, I don't think DD had much to do with it. Being more expensive than the competition and having millions of stroes probably hurt them more.

BTW, I love how the European baseline is 5Mbps but the US baseline is 3....

@xbob42 said:

@Rewcastle said:

@xbob42 said:

@Rewcastle said:

@scaramoosh said:

No refunds from pre orders.........

We are offering full refunds on pre orders, actually. Instead of all the negativity, perhaps you would be so kind as to spare a thought for the poor bastards who have to process 100s upon 100s of refunds for angry customers.

I am not defending Game as a company - because fuck that - but think of the innocent people who are losing jobs.

People lose jobs all the fucking time. That's no excuse to rob folks. But that's kind of GAME's favorite thing to do, isn't it?

Hah. Quoting and replying to a post which you didn't read properly. Gold.

I read it when I replied to it. I'll take the word of the company over the word of an alleged single employee claiming the complete opposite as to what has been officially reported, thanks.

Of course you will. The media is feeding you a grand feast. That doesn't stop the fact I had to refund shit loads of pre orders the other day. These stories are full of half truths. A lot of it is correct and well informed, which makes me wonder how they manage to dig up shitty gems like "no refunds for pre orders!". What IS shocking is the fact Game is keeping hold of all the reward points AND gift card money. Essentially holding people's money. It's just like a bank now :D