UK Retailer GAME Won't Be Stocking Mass Effect 3, Other Upcoming EA Products

@Adrean89: they can't compete with online prices, there agenda is wrong and out of touch with any real 'gaming enthusiasts' needs and they don't have any stock.

I hope the company survives. Is it big electronic chains that are out competing them?

Capcom games are not getting stocked either now, and I understand staff are being asked if they agree to waiver their contracted hours. I think the end might come sooner than we all thought.

Went by a blockbuster today and they had big signs up saying "preorder mass effect 3 now! Not available in GAME or Gamestation!!"

Hahahaahahah I didn't even know blockbuster actually sold things but clearly other companies are taking advantage of this.

Take out the middle man! Take him out back and TAKE HIM OUT.

I'm less worried about the business itself as much as the people who work there.

My local Gamestation in particular have always had the best staff working there and it'll be a shame, a really big shame, to see those guys out of work.

Better go spend those GAME card points then I suppose

People who don't buy games online are crazy people.

I have never had a problem with GAME. The stores I use (Cwmbran, Cardiff and Newport mainly) I find are staffed by pleasant and helpful sorts and if I go to exchange a game, or get a refund its never an issue. I have mass effect 3 reserved with them so this is a bastard as far as I'm concerned.

I'm no fan of going through digital retailers. I much prefer to go to the nearest store and buy the game rather than cock about ordering it online or buying it digitally. If GAME goes then aside from HMV (which also stocks games) I have no clue where on the highstreet I can get games. I refrain from buying them in supermarkets to support the highstreet shops (same with DVD's) but I may end up having to. I did not know the company was having trouble as the nearest one to me (Cwmbran) is always pretty busy and when you get the big releases the bloody place is full to bursting.

Edit. I just remembered about Gamestation. Now for some reason I've never liked going in there. Maybe the small size of the nearest store to me is offputting, or something less tangible.

This is just effing wierd.. in Sweden Game is a lot cheaper and better then Gamestop.. frankly there is no competition even... At game you can buy pre-owned games for about 30-50% cheaper then Gamestop and we pay a lot more then you guys from the beginning 699kr = ~103,5$. I bought GTAIV pre owned at Game for ~25$ and the price for GTAIV pre owned at Gamestop was ~43$

I agree with all the remarks about the customer service, prices and trade-in policies with GAME stores. Can't wait for it to go under.

But then knowing its subsidiaries are Gamestation and the site Gameplay.com (which was taken down, literally, yesterday) I'm worried because I like them! Gameplay were always really well priced and delivered day of release, if no day before - been shopping and shipping with those guys for years. Contradictory to what some other people are saying the Gamestation near me is great and I think their beat any other trade-in price is incredible. Not to mention informed and friendly service - video game banter was had with the staff on numerous occasions!

I'm just hoping they kill off GAME and leave Gamestation in the knowledge that their more hardcore audience will trust them and keep spending. But then again that image will most likely change to replace the bright and colourful appeal of GAME stores... It's a tough call, but if it all goes down the pan, no way am I paying HMV prices! And (for me anyway) there is nowhere else on the high-street that I can really go for games, especially brand new ones. Apart from supermarkets I guess...

UK fellas trying to secure a Mass Effect 3 N7 Edition should try amazon.de, the German Amazon branch. They still have plenty stock for consoles and as Chris Priestly (Community Manager at BioWare) personally assured me, the German version will have complete English language support.

@Y2Ken said:

This is pretty nuts. Be interested to see how this affects GameStation as they are owned by GAME. I've bought a few things from there for launch events but most games are just cheaper online now. Will have to make a point of going in and spending my reward points before they stop accepting them I guess.

My £8.52 still hasn't been refunded after they cancelled my pre-order. I sent them an e-mail, but I wonder if there's a clause somewhere in T&C's which says they have every right not to give it back to my Rewards Account.

Things are tough everywhere.

I'm slightly confused as to why EB took so long to close the stores it had near GAME stores after the merger. Seems like a huge cash hole to me. I'm also slightly confused at what point and why EB separated from its international operations, to form Game Group. I would have thought an international game sales conglomerate would have been a good idea, rather than spinning off into individual companies.

If anyone on here from the UK is affected by this and still looking for a copy of the CE Grainger Gameshas some and apparently HMV are now taking preorders for it.

@X19: You say that, but up here in the North of Scotland (and quite a few other places, no doubt) there is only a Game and a Gamestation. If they go then there is literally nowhere else selling games.

I know, I know - "Order online etc." - but sometimes it's nice to browse in a shop.

Being an employee of GAME I can say I am absolutely disgusted by this as not a week ago we were told "we won't be stocking The Last Story so we can secure more Mass Effect 3". If I didn't have a £177 gift card at the store I'd do all my ordering online (which I will be doing with ShopTo after my GC has been spent on the SW 360 bundle)

I wasn't going to pick up ME3 on the day anyway but knowing the amount of preorders we have taken I can definitely say I am not looking forward to work on the 9th. Terrible move by the company

GAME appeared briefly in Brisbane, Australia - I saw two GAME Stores open directly opposite EB (what Gamestop is called here) - and both failed utterly within 6 months. The reason? Despite being the newcomer, most of their games, even the second hand ones, were usually a few dollars more expensive than at any other nearby store. Yeah, that's right - they thought they could just open up directly next to a well-established, decades old competitor and charge higher.

The staff knew next to nothing about games and were hired solely for their looks (both the men and the women) and they didn't help customers, except if they were middle-aged mums and dads trying to buy a game for their kid, which in that case they'd swarm over them and offer them ludicrously overpriced "deals" and "scratch" insurance.

I bought precisely one game at GAME, and I never went back there. Sure, EB are just as gouge-tastic as GAME used to be, but at least the staff in EB occasionally know a little about games. Sometimes.

This is pretty nuts. Be interested to see how this affects GameStation as they are owned by GAME. I've bought a few things from there for launch events but most games are just cheaper online now. Will have to make a point of going in and spending my reward points before they stop accepting them I guess.

Can't wait for GAME to die. Hopefully Gamestation will go with it.

Ordering online from them for 5years has been issue free. Pre orders were nearly always 1 day early, pre order bonuses better than Amazon, cheaper overall. Plus the earned points per game is a bonus.

Competition is always a good thing for the consumer, agree the retail side was god awful, sad loss as far as I'm concerned if this goes to its logical conclusion.

ME3 had pushed me to the ever reliable Amazon.

Damn! I nearly took a job there before Christmas! Glad I didn't but this is really bad news :( I've been going to this place since it was an Electronics Boutique. Time to cash in my reward points then :(

I hope they don't go under, them being one of the better places to get games and the good people they employ.

GAME have for a long time been terrible, of course I mean no disrespect to its staff, but as a company they thrived off consumer ignorance targeting parents/jocks/histpers. They charge full RRP, when HMV or a mom/pop store will be selling the same game for £4-5 cheaper. 
 
They were once decent and competitve (90's - early 2000's) when they had competiton from the likes of Future Zone and EB, so brought those companies out one by one. Their entire business strategy post 2000/02 was to try and monopolise the market, and only succeeded in disrespecting and driving away consumers. Then the market changed with online shops becoming more common and supermarkets stocking games as well (and loss leading on big titles like CoD/FIFA), GAME failed to changed their business strategy and so end up in this position. Greed was their game and they lost.

@Bantamoose said:

Well I hope they hold on long enough so I can still get my £22 Diablo III pre-order. ^^

Thanks for mentioning that, I completely forgot I had the Diablo 3 CE ordered there, and almost everywhere else has sold out of it. I really don't want to miss that one, so I've just changed my order. Phew.

For anyone still looking for the ME3 one, have you tried Gamestop, Blockbuster or Sainsburies? I hear they still have stock.

Fuck game, they bought the best game retailer in norway - Spiderman they were called. Their logo was mickey mouse in a spiderman suit, i have no idea how that logo didn't get them into legal trouble.

No wonder Game is going out of business with their policies. I went to pick up Skyrim on launch day, i did not preorder because fuck that. When i went to game the gentleman behind the desk informed me that "yeah, you should have preordered" because they were appearantly out of stock for us regular non-preordering guys. So i went over to gamestop and got a copy there, and they had plenty left. I don't know why you don't stock up on one of the biggest games of the year.

I wish Spiderman was still around.

Oh man, absolutely everywhere else is now sold out of the N7 edition.

Dammit. =(

I'm always surprised to read about gamers still shopping in GAME. Especially because I read about it on the internet, where they must have the internet, connected to the internet. On the internet.

What I think i'm trying to say is ...ShopTo.net

Right, well as far as I'm now concerned Game and EA can go and fuck themselves.

I preoredered the ME3 N7 Collector's Edition from Game because Game always pull these bullshit deals where they are the only - or one of the few - stores that get the collector's editions of games.

I would normally order from Amazon but they aren't selling the N7 edition (in the UK at least) because of these fucking deals that the publishers work out with the stores.

This is why Game is going under, because of shitty service.

I preordered the collector's edition as soon as it became available MONTHS ago because I knew it would sell out and now, only a week before the game comes out Game cancel all the preorders for it and it's sold out everywhere else in the UK.

I will never buy another game from Game and I know others that are saying the same. So way to cement your store going out of business Game. Well done.

still cannot find the n7 collector's edition for 360 in stock anywhere. complete debacle.

Well I hope they hold on long enough so I can still get my £22 Diablo III pre-order. ^^

I wonder what this means for GAME in Australia.

Not the first retailer to do that. In Canada a lot of chains have started to kill video games and send the bulk of their stock to one or more flagship stores...

Feel sorry for all their emplyees atm, a big retailer going out of business regardless how you feel about them isn't good for alot of people.

Time to cash in my £11 credit. What should I buy? I have an Xbox 360, Windows gaming rig & Amstrad GX4000.

So, many, fucking, commas.

If they go under it's going to suck and that's coming from someone who works for their competition (HMV). I get that everybody likes to buy stuff cheaper online, but it would be a real shame if we couldn't still walk into a store and browse and walk out with a product immediately.

@dekkadekkadekka: Whenever I do, it's immeasurably pleasing.

Wow, that giant "NOOOOOPE".

Way to make it look like a Kotaku article.

they must be ready to go into "administration" (or whatever you call it across the pond), if their solution is to STOP stocking games that sell

@Goldanas: it's a very good service, nice store, plenty of random options of what to purchase, what they do wrong is that well they sell most new games at 40-45 pound, while other places such as tesco, play.com, asda, etc sell games at 35-40 pounds so not many people go in there to purchase games from them, they also give tons of cash for 2nd hand games and barely get much back in return, i remember years ago trading in a copy of condemned 2 for 25 quid and seeing it a few days later for the same price i traded it in for brand new

but yeah great employees, sometimes real good deals, nice customer points reward card scheme, just need to make their other pricing models work better for them

I worked for game whilst going through college, it was great at the time as I had grown up buying all my games from there starting with the Amiga in the early nineties, I stopped shopping there a couple of years though as they started getting really pushy with preowned and other add ons but it will be sad to see them go, they are the last large specialist video game chain in the uk (excluding game station which they own)

Serves them right, under stocking, over priced, deceptive, oppressive hate machine who buy out the competition then market them like they don't own them.

Anyone in the UK should be using www.play.com

@BoOzak: Despite being owned by gamestop, theyre still EB here in canada.

@Cramsy said:

@Krokodile said:

Pleeeeease let this happen to Gamestop.

yeah people losing their jobs is awesome!

The idea of Gamestop is fine, the way they do their business is the problem. I don't want people to lose their job, but no company deserves to thrive with tactics and morals like theirs.

I was genuinely sad to read this story this morning as unfortunately I believe this is the beginning of the end for GAME. Having been a customer from an early age, I have purchased some of my all time favorite games from their store.

What saddens me more is that I had the privilege to work for the company over christmas as a temp and was offered a full time job only for these events to occur and be told that they are no longer able to recruit. My time at the company was highly enjoyable and the staff were fantastic, some of the nicest people i've ever met with a great interest and knowledge in the medium of Video Games, contrary to what you may read/hear on the internet.

Admittedly prices are higher than a lot of other places, which is a great shame as this has eventually led to their downfall. However, what needs to be understood is that prices are high due to the market they are competing with. High street retail stores compete with other retail stores and online compete with online, whilst supermarket prices are generally lower as the chances of you buying other items in store means they will make more money off you. The problems of the online prices undercutting retail prices is evident when you see that it is not only GAME and Gamestation that are in trouble but also HMV, another electronic media retailer that has been around for many years.

It would be a huge shame to see Game stores disappear from the high street, as for many it is a great way of interacting with other gamers and sharing stories on a face to face basis, and lets be honest, a bit of one to one customer service with a discussion of your gaming experience is surely better than simply clicking 'Checkout' on an online store.

I just wish GAME all the best in the recovery of the company, especially all of my ex-colleagues at the Chester store who make a huge effort to ensure that customers leave the store happy and enjoy returning for more stories, laughs, great customer service and most of all to purchase more fantastic games to keep the company afloat.

Well ain't that some shit.