Players in the United States have GameStop, players in Canada have EB Games, and players in the UK have GAME as their major gaming-dedicated retailers. Or at least, UK players did have GAME, as the retailer is set to close its last three remaining standalone GAME stores after it made creditors aware it would be entering administration, the UK phrase for declaring bankruptcy.
After Bloomberg reported that GAME had entered administration, a report from The Game Business (via VGC) a few days later identified that the last three standalone GAME stores in the UK would be closed, as the company is once again on the brink of collapsing. It'll still operate its website, and players in the UK will still be able to visit locations that operate within larger Frasers Group-owned entities as concession stands, but it will no longer have standalone brick-and-mortar storefronts.
The British gaming retailer was acquired by the Frasers Group back in 2019, and over the years, the company has been cutting down on its services, like ending trade-ins in January 2024, followed by ending in-store pre-orders in July 2024. And in between those changes, it laid off a "majority" of staff in April 2024.
Ending pre-orders and trade-ins may be unique to GAME, but retailers dedicated to games across the world have suffered store closures and layoffs, including the aforementioned GameStop and EB Games. Plenty of players still buy their titles physically, but most are buying them on the digital storefronts available on their device, whether that's Steam, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Store or the Nintendo eShop.
The writing has been on the wall for retailers dedicated to gaming for years now, and with GAME set to close its remaining standalone stores, it's the closing of a chapter in the business of video games. Still, back in 2023, the company's managing director, Nick Arran, denied that it would be turning away from selling video games to focus instead on selling toys and other physical items.
"Gaming is our core business and we will be last man standing selling physical video games," Arran said in an interview with GamesIndustry.Biz. "We see our place in the market as proving that there is a place for physical, whether that be the collector's editions, which we see as the vinyl of video games, or the gifter who doesn't want to wrap up a download code for Christmas. But we need to be realistic. We have a business to run and the expectation is this will decline. So we need to fill that gap."
Three years later, it's tough to see the British retailer as the "last man standing" as a gaming-dedicated store if it doesn't have any stores around. Its concessions will continue, but if the company keeps declining, those may be gone sooner than later as well.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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