How are they not dead? They went into administration a few years back. There was 3 stores in my city at one time and now it's been reduced to the corner of a Sports Direct. What the frick is keeping these stores open?
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>You will never go back.
Didn't they just get bought by CEX? It's the same thing.
Kind of hated GameStation for killing the local independent place I went to as a kid anyway.
no GAME brought them off Blockbuster and threw them under the bus
they were owned by the same parent company, who cares about fake store fighting
They got bought up by the CEO of a string of megacompanies and now only exist inside Sports Direct. They also only sell games newer than 1 month because of profit margins and each store has a single staff member.
I remember the day I traded in Dead Space and got £85 instore credit instead of £8.50
the one in exeter is still its own separate shop
Exeter is probably too affluent to have a Sports Direct.
it has TWO sports directs
for me its electronic boutique
>I have just put it together in my head that electronic boutique is EB games in other countries
electronic boutique literally became game
Not quite. EB bought Game and then rebranded all their stores as Game. I still have my old EB card which still works at Game.
The old EB shop in my town was a real fricking nerd dungeon. When it became a shiny and clean GAME it really did lose the magic, though the rebrand did mean it was a place normal people would venture into.
I miss the old EB shop too, not only was it fairly priced but the people that were working there all cared about the hobby. Christ, it's depressing to think how the UK has become an africanized shithole in just 20 years.
Never got the appeal, there was a gamestation on the same street as the Game store where I lived
They both sold the exact same games at the same price
gamestation usually had a much larger pre-owned section than game at least where I lived, I think that may have even been gamestation's model until CEX killed them
For my town, Gamestation was always cheaper and had more options than Game.
But the Pandemic has pretty much cemented the downfall of high street stores, I just buy from Steam, from Amazon or Gog or I'll pirate.
Also if you're from London, South East or Birmingham you're not English.
>Life long West Londoner
>Move away for uni
>Everyone is white
I don't personally care, it's what I grew up with, but it suddenly became very clear why people do care
I live up North and used to visit London and Surrey all throughout the 90s as I've family there. I can tell you, the change was fast to say not 30 years ago London was still majority English never mind White (most White's you find in London now aren't English they're Europeans) is not a lie.
Same things happening all over now even where I am in Cardiff we're fast becoming London 2.0, everyone is either fleeing to the countryside or going over to Austrailia.
lived in the south west all my life and rarely ever seen a foreigner, when I went to london it was like being in another country
I used to think growing up in a 99% White town was boring, nothing happened it was too quiet and peaceful. But as I've gotten older I'm very grateful knowing how the rest of the country is having travelled all over and seen for myself the state of it. In comparison I'll take my boring town with people who know each other and still say Hello to people they don't than the alternative.
On to games, this is part of it growing up in that town we didn't have much in the way of electronic stores which did make it boring, I remember it was big local news that we were getting a Game shop. All these years later and we've never even had a Cinema either.
I live in rural Yorkshire where the place is so white last time I went to spoons with my black friend a gammon took a selfie with us and let me tell you that British yobs cause just as much trouble as foreigners.
>a gammon took a selfie
Beats getting stabbed to death or living around paki rape gangs.
That was to show how white the place is, not the level of problems. A guy near where I live hacked into someone’s neck recently with a machete for his gold chain and he is white as white can be.
>But what about this white guy, huh?
And? For every moronic chav that decides he wants to nig out there are 100 Black folk in London stabbing each other over nothing or making everyone elses lives a misery. Don't get me started on no go zones like Bradford or Rotherham.
It was white on white and it wasn’t an isolated incident. Just because a lot of crimes happen In mostly black areas - and I’m sure they do - it doesn’t mean white brits don’t do just as much horrible shit. I know from first hand experience growing up here and knowing the actual criminals I know irl that they do. Know so many white kids nicking bikes and so many pinga slingas
Also, have you ever seen brits on holiday in places like maga?
Of course we have our own bad behaviour but that doesn't excuse the fact that you're trying to deflect from the obvious issue, this is why the per capita meme of the black femjack pushing a massive afro up a mountain takes the piss out of. The fact of the matter is, these people are a net negative and they're turning every part of the country they colonize in to an abject shithole.
No I was just commenting on white brits specifically. I’m not making any comments about black people. Btw post that meme pls
You forgot Bradford, please nuke this place already
>You forgot Bradford, please nuke this place already
Better get some sleep before the first Adhan sounds, Abdul
Unironically Funko pops and Minecraft merchandise
I used to get most of my games from gamestop until they started doing this shit.
They used to have a decent selection and you could find some rare gems every now and then but now 2/3rds of the store is basically a fricking toys r us.
Now you go in there and the selection sucks ass and the employees always hound you for extended warranties and platinum cards. Haven't bought from them in years.
money laundering
>game
>phoneshit on display
GAME is basically a less smelly CeX at this point.
last time I went in cex there was a queue of people clearly there to sell stuff for weed money because they fricking stank of it
i don't know why people even use cex for selling stuff, you can get more on facebook marketplace and they bring the cash direct to your house
Every time I've ever tried to list anything of value on FBM all I get are scammers and maybe the occasional pajeet trying to lowball the frick out of me
Gumtree seems to attract more honest people, none of that
>i really want to buy but my sister is local to you, can i pay ahead of time with paypal and she comes to collect tonight?
>Do you still have this
>instantly reply "yes"
>they never say another word
>botnet
>not guaranteed to sell your shit
>could get robbed
vs
>walk in and sell your shit
Because you get the money on the spot
>list on FBM/Ebay
>potentially sitting on it for days/weeks if it isn't a super in demand game
>have to deal with moronic buyers and scammers, meeting up or packing it and posting it
>potential for buyers remorse returns on ebay
vs
>go to CEX
>they just check the game is the in box
>get paid
I usually use Ebay, but I can see why a druggie desperate for their next fix would choose CEX.
>smelly CeX
Its all those used DVDs and Fifa copies that were sitting under some chavs laundry basket for years of smoke and cum
Do people actually buy DVDs anymore? That's kind of wild to me as a thing. I guess drug addicts who can't figure out how to get an internet connection in their squat.
Old people buy them all the time, around here the internet speeds are woefully bad, 2MB per second on a really good day
Are you living under a rock? All the streaming services are terrible and don’t have anything and finding a working putlocker type site is much harder and half of them just stop working every 10 mins
I wasn’t expecting to go back to torrenting since I have a job now, but I can’t even pay to get the movies I want any more online otherwise. DVDs/BDs are quickly looking like the better option and people are slowly going back to physical because the online services are so terrible
>streaming services
If you want a 480p copy of some film from 20 years ago, there's a good chance it's just on youtube, and if that fails it will be on some Russian site.
If you're a collector type, I understand buying blurays, but who is buying DVD in 2024?
Who is going out to CeX hoping to find a new DVD copy of Predator? Someone, apparently.
I doubt the kind of people buying dvds from cex are concerned about it not being 4k UHD
Yeah, but watch it on Youtube at that point, because standards are out the window.
Watch it on Dailymotion.
You genuinely wouldn't believe how technologically inept the average person is
try speaking to a middle aged person one of these days, DVDs are still cutting edge technology for some of them let alone OAPs
>and finding a working putlocker type site is much harder and half of them just stop working every 10 mins
No they don't. One of the big ones literally just provides a list of their entire network when a site goes down so you can find the new one which usually only happens like once every 18 months maybe.
>Do people actually buy DVDs anymore?
Yes. Most DVD are cheap, meanwhile blu-ray are most expensive. If this have a price of 20, people prefer Dune in dvd because the price is 6
Buying DVDs in the UK is especially insane. Last format to suffer from the PAL speedup.
There is literally no reason to buy something online unless it's only online and not behind a rental service.
Otherwise you rip discs or find a piracy stream if you don't consider it worth wasting your own space on.
>Bongland superpower 2025
This is the sign of a strong economy.
Last time I went to a GameStop it seemed like an iPhone and iPad pawn shop.
>iPad from GameStop
I've seen what gamers do on /gif/ there is no way I'd trust an iPad from there.
last time i set foot in a gamestop was around 6 years ago,
and there were more toys and smartphones/tablets than videogame hardware and media.
used games and phone shit
>go into local GAME in shithole town in NI
>There is one isle of actual vidya
>everything else is overpriced toys
>I don't mean funkopops and fortnite figures, I mean actual non-vidya related toys clogging up the shelves at absurd markups like a Barbie doll at 55 fricking quid.
Every GAME in NI is like this in my experience
The one in Ballymena now has like an eSports section with PCs you can rent out, it's bizarre
The one in Craigavon tried to set up those gaming PCs you could pay to use for an hour, for events, but no one ever uses those anymore and it just takes up space in an already cramped store.
i miss non-chain game shops 🙁
I miss slavery
They are basically dead.
They tried buying Gamestation as a last stand effort which was commendable but not enough to stem the tide of CEXes popping up everywhere, which is why they sell phones and tablets now.
The main thing keeping them alive are children with no easy access to buy either games or XBL/PSN cards from home, so they bug their parents to get such things while they are out already, which is doubly why they are now shacking up in Sports Direct, that shop is mainly just parents buying their kids cheap kicks and whatever else they might need to kick ball with their mates, so the foot traffic converts
It will soon be gone altogether
Is gaming culture in the UK dead?
I think it died with the Amiga.
It feels more alive than ever, you just have to know where to look. probably need to live in London too
man this was such crap but it was all i had, i didn't have the internet at the time, and got like 1 magazine a month
There was so much potential for a video game news show back then.
Gamesville was obviously influenced by bigwigs that knew nothing of games and didnt care
Good God I remember this show.
Anyone on here remember .tv technology on Sky back in the 00s?
...Why can't we go back?
.tv rings a bell. Was that the channel that had tournaments on at night or am I thinking of something else? That was probably the first time I saw actual eSports
Anyone old enough to remember Cybernet? I think there was a technology or gaming newsletter on the Sky red button back in the day too, I remember that's how I found out the PS2's launch date.
I think that was GameNetwork, it was next to Fashion TV.
I used to fap furiously to Fashion TV as a teenager because it had what was essentially nudity on there.
So many of those channels came and went.
Fashion TV? You gotta hold it and go play outside for a bit, come back in and have a sneaky wank to Babestation after dinner
OMG I might have to fap to Gemma Hiles tonight now you've reminded me of Babestation.
The only places gaming actually feels alive are the Asian pc cafes in the built up shopping areas of central london and the hipster gamer bars like Meltdown. Everywhere else it feels like its completely dead
Like I said, gotta' know where to look. There's a fantastic spot for rhythm gaming in Central, out in Croydon the Heart of Gaming is well priced with a frickton of cabs plus Switches and PS4s.
Haven't been to Meltdown in a while, not a fan of going too far North
My local Game closed and now exists in sports direct lmao
Loughborough?
loogabarooga
My local Game got moved into a tiny corner of Sports Direct and has more general kids toys than actual video games at this point.
>There was 3 stores in my city at one time and now it's been reduced to the corner of a Sports Direct
Bro do you live in Lisburn?
>you lived to see the day where fricking cex ended up being a better store for vidya than game
Pretty grim
I remember going in to CEX to buy a Switch, but the prices they were selling them at were basically £10 less than brand new. I was about to leave when I heard some dude getting shitty with the guy at the desk because the price they were offering him for his switch was less than half of what they were selling them at. I went over and offered to buy it off him right there in store if he could show me that it worked.
The cashier threatened to ban both of us from the shop for life and we both laughed and told him to frick off. I ended up getting my switch for cheap, and he ended up selling it for way more than they were offering and the cashier was absolutely fuming. Win/Win/Win.
Yeah their prices are atrocious I won't deny.
God
They should sell the Christmas Tinner for real.
>be UK bong kid
>want vidya merch
>GAME sells frick all merch
>have to rely on ebay years later for merch
>eventually move to PC permanently and buy games digitally
>many more years pass
>GAME shop somehow still exists
>go inside
>full of merch and has a big section for PC now
FRICK YOU where the frick was all this shit when I was growing up?
Merch is a fricking plague now.
My local game store is taking away a bunch of shelf space they used for retro games to sell merch that NO ONE in this small town is going to buy. No one. Like funko pops and those 3D framed sprite art bollocks and wallets and shit. It's ridiculous. The owner thinks that shit will actually sell.
>How are they not dead?
i have also wondered that
>Sports Direct
yeah mine is also in a sports direct now
Their boardgame selection isnt terrible and sometimes not a bad price.
>Grow up near an actual used game store
>As in, one owned by an actual person and had used Atari, NES, Genesis, PS1, etc. games, consoles, and accessories alongside the then-current used/new GCN/Xbox/PS2, staffed by actual sweaty nerds next to kiosks running Metal Slug on neo geos
I cannot fricking understand the nostalgia for Gamestop, or EB games, or GameCrazy, or Funcoland or any of that shit.
They were always garbage, literally no different than a WalMart in any meaningful way.
I swear you fricks are 1 step away from waxing nostalgic over Hot Topic, Spencer's Gifts, and FYE.
Haven't bought from GAME is like 2 decades. Right now there's so many stores I can buy from online and they're fricking cheaper.
>sell consoles without disc drives
They are just cutting their toes off lmao
Score Game had existed in France but they closed all their stores.
Same for Virgin Megastore, I really miss them both.
It was the best video games store here, frick Micromania and their inflated prices
Sports Direct bought the company and reduced it to something they can use to flog high-return nerd merch and FIFA while they wait on all the other standalone stores to go bust and sell the retail space off to land developers. It's a real estate flip. GAME is basically worthless. It's the stores' locations worth anything.
>stores get sold for money laundering vape shops for albanian gangs
grim
Been nigh on 40 years of decline in the UK to be honest. I don't really see any way back from this.
That's sadly where all the money is in high street shops now. Turn the brand itself into an online retailer and flog all the retail space to property developers who sell it to money launderers.
Wait for the gentrification
You too can have boba tea shops, overpriced Asian markets, two to five American fast food joints that serve horrible food that tastes nothing like the American version.
Isn't the high street dying on it's arse? Where I'm from shops close and the units stay empty for months if not years. The Woolworths and the BHS have never been filled. Empty for nearly 2 decades. I'm surprised high street real estate is worth anything.
all the little retail areas are becoming student housing near me
Until that scam collapses. Every uni town that doesn’t have a top uni is going to collapse when the foreign students they rely on stop coming. It’s already happening
You don’t know normies. They want the cheapest and easiest path to get what they want. DVDs are actually that
pretty sure it's in the top 10 or 20, and there's TONS of chinks going to it
i used to go to game to get steam wallet cards, good times
Why did Game become a shitty toy shop instead of importing a bunch of overpriced Japanese toys like GameStop does now?
Went to a GameStop when I was in the states last year and they had shit like Gundams and Kamen Rider figures but back here Game is selling Trolls movie toys and PlayDoh.
>that one Black person Barbie doll in a wheelchair thats been taking up shelf space for the past 3 months
Because America is a lot closer to Japan than the UK is, so it’s cheaper and easier to import
do people buy movies in cex? I only ever look at the retro games like the ps3 and 360 sections
>retro games
>ps3 and 360
Anon stop. I beg you.
ps3 came out 18 years ago man
I know and it hurts.
Not often. They just stock so many because it's basically a license to slowly print money, they buy them in for as little as 1p. They're preying on people coming in with whole collections. Usually they come in with fifty or so DVDs and maybe two actual electronic items worth a shit, they want to take the value of the electronics and in the moment realise dragging the DVDs back home isn't worth it so they just agree to anything.
>t. own a shop that basically does exactly what cex does, we even use their prices to buy shit in
You just can't win if you're trying to sell secondhand anywhere.
>sell on israeliteBay
>you are completely at the mercy of the buyer
>buyer can literally fricking lie about not receiving the package
>even if the fricking package states that it was delivered since it was tracked, got a signature, and the sales details expressly state no returns, israeliteBay will still yoink that money right out of your account even if the homosexual had the package that whole time
>on top of all of that, you WILL deal with jeets and lowballers even when you've already priced it to sell for a modest profit/loss
>even if it sells, you're getting raped by shipping, israeliteBay fees and now GayPal fees
>and even if by some miracle everything goes by smoothly, you are cucked out of the money for a month, which will also be reported to the IRS goy 😉
>sell to FRICKING GAMESTOP
>enjoy getting $7.50 for that $60 israelitetendo game 🙂
>sell to FB Marketplace/Craigslist/OfferUp
>enjoy getting lowballed and/or dealing with ni- scholarly donation experts bro
>god forbid if you find literally anyone else within 100 miles that actually has similar tastes in vidya as (You)
I cannot fricking win.
As a buyer I feel like I have the opposite problems.
>Try to find something on ebay.
>Find something for decent price
>seller wants $150 for shipping
>find something for decent price
>it's auction only
>week to go
>2 bids
>check back on final day
>3 bidders
>have driven the price to be triple what was the original "decent" price
>EB Games
>unless it was released in the previous console generation don't bother
>FB Marketplace
>Find item
>Item was listed 2 minutes ago
>Message owner
>Get no response
>Get response 6 hours later
>"Sold it".
you're all antisocial shut ins. why would you give a crap about retail stores?
I don't, I actually want to see them all burn. frick retail
Speak for yourself
Its the UK, retail stores are about as anti-social as they get.
Because I hate the idea of a future where everyone is at the mercy of Amazon
Amazon are truly dogshit. Literally every fricking thing I bought from there last year came damaged. They weren't this bad a couple of years ago but I've stopped using them even when what I'm after isn't in stock anywhere else.
Shopto for games, HMV for films, Blackwells for books (RIP bookdepository).
>buying from western aliexpress
your own fault anon
Future? It's happening now.
I love retail stores. Walking in, browsing the shelves, see if I can find something I haven't got at a decent price. The amount of great games I got for cheap is astounding. I think my best finds were Dragon Quest 8 for 12€ and Yakuza 2 for 2,50€. That's Yakuza 2 for the PS2, not Kiwami. Gran Turismo 5 and 6 for 5 bucks each, Kane and Lynch 1 and 2 for 3,50 each, Ace Combat 6 for 10€, it's a rush.
What causes the CeX smell?
the customers
>Game UK
>UK Game (girl)
Thats a man isn't it?
nah she has a pusoo
'fraid not
>she's cute-
>those scars
oof
>What the frick is keeping these stores open
People still shop there, simple as, I went today to my nearest one here in spain to see if I bought one game and the store was packed, albeit it is a really small establishment.
>The Game in Stratford is gone
>The Game in Walthamstow is long gone
>There is literally nowhere in East London to buy physical copies of games anymore unless you go out to Essex or go deeper into Central
I mean its for the best because its ridiculously overpriced garbage and they're trying to rebrand into merch shops/pc cafes anyway (They will fail) but still, its sad.
>East London
hmmmm
>The Game in Stratford is gone
Its in Westfield now lad. Middle floor on the outside but next to TK Maxx. Also, pretty sure there is a Game in Dalston as well & a independent game shop in Hackney Central near the Greggs.
T. Hackney lad.
>Its in Westfield now lad. Middle floor on the outside but next to TK Maxx
Thats the one I was talking about. It just went a couple months ago because the house of frasier bought the lots either side, closed down the "BEYOND GAMING ARENA" upstairs to build over the top of them and eventually muscled them out of the ground floor too. I was in there back in like... September I think talking to the manager. He knew the days were numbered then.
>Hackney central
I value my life
So thats gone as well. So all thats left are the CEX's.
>I value my life
Fair but they used to be quite decent & had some good deals on old pc games. It was like the Gamestation games where you could get 3 for £10 on old PC games. No clue what its like now. Saying that are you from East Village or Hackney Wick if you think Mare street is dangerous?
Im actually from chingford but I grew up in harlow too. Both equally shitty but the tameness of both areas made me sensitive to places like croydon, peckham, hackney etc.
I did games testing in croydon for a few months last year and it shocked me just how much rougher it was then the east london outskirts. It makes walthamstow look tame (that being said Walthamstow was only dodgy 20 years+ ago, nowadays its a lot more gentrified)
I dunno I'm just on a massive anti london trip in general at the moment coz I've lived here most of my life and everything so fricking dirty, expensive, poorly run etc. And I did a year in Nagoya aichi a couple years ago and it really put into perspective how shit we got it
eww that flab
What's with zoomers thinking this is how scene girls looked? They didn't dress like prostitutes like this
why is her thong showing. thats not part of the look
Congratulations to the both of you for making it to adulthood
Because the ones not absorbed into Sports Dorect have become toy shops that happen to sell video games.
>it's been reduced to the corner of a Sports Direct.
LEEDS?
Wish we could do a Ganker London meet up. I just want some people to go drinking with (I have no friends)
I'm sorry but every bone in my body says that is a bad idea.
And you'd be right, it's nearly 10 years since this frick up and I can't imagine it'd be any better now.
Look up when the next MCM Comic Con is and check the brit thread on /cgl/ when it's happening
I flirted with the idea of going to a con but I just don't see the appeal of going alone.
Someone got raped at the last one. Be careful.
I'll always remember the day game scammed me
>2006
>go to game during my break at college
>see vampire rain, ask the guy behind the counter if it's good
>"Yeah it's pretty good, it's like VM and splinter cell"
Frick you game
Gamestation scammed me by getting me to trade in my DSi XL without transferring the DRM rights to the 3DS I was getting, they assured me all I had to do was move the SD card. Even went back well, got my mum to go back to complain but the data was wiped so it was too late. Couldn't sign into the Nintendo account and re-download the games since it didn't exist back then, really redpilled me on how much Nintendo are pure techlets.
The frick do UK game shops even have now that the Coleco is dead and you can't buy Eggy's Ultra Maze?
They opened a new store recently in my area. Very odd tbqh.
>Go to GAME the morning Fallout 76 released
>Pick up a copy on PS4 and notice the shop is decked out in Fallout-themed decorations and statues
>Bro behind counter asks me if I'd heard about the midnight release
>a grand total of nobody came
>Went home, installed the game and left for uni classes in the afternoon
>Lecture cut short so went back home, tried 76
>It was, unsurprisingly, utter shit
>Go to return it that evening about an hour before close
>Young guy behind the counter doesn't even see what's in my bag before asking "are you here to return Fallout?"
>"Yeah, how'd you know?"
>"Mate, I've done nothing but process refunds since my shift started."
That was the last time I used GAME. October 2018. Their trade-in value when I was a student was fantastic, I think I bought one or two physical games between 2015 and 2018 and just traded every other one in each time.
>cex stratford: disgusting. so many crackheads trading in old ipods, pes and fifa games, singstar microphones. mogadishu in london.
>cex dalston: disgusting. in 2019 there were these fat nerd cashiers that would talk about going to japan to get girlfriends.
>cex islington: small and always empty. the games are usually in good condition and have manuals.
>cex walthamstow: inside the most depressing shopping center. all the cashiers are turks.
>cex holloway: cleanest with most normal staff. always has gameboy pokemon games in the front window. in the cue theres always children making their mothers buy them gta or cod.
>cex fullham: used to be on the disgusting highstreet. bought kindom under fire and the cashier told me he his gf used to blow him while he played it and halo 2 back in 2005
>always has gameboy pokemon games in the front window
Soul...
There was an Arby’s in my town that was always deserted since the day it opened. It stayed in business for over a decade and no one knew why. Turns out the owner was using it as a front to sell heroine while also running a brothel.
Anyways, if there’s an abandoned store in your town that mysteriously stays in business, the answer is usually brothel/drugs.
>and now it's been reduced to the corner of a Sports Direct.
I live in Stirling and the GAME in the Sports Direct store seems like absolute fricking hell.
>Inside a shitty mall
>the SD is upstairs in some kind of fricked up loft area
>No ventilation so its stuff, even in the middle of winter.
>Layout is byzantine, you can't even see GAME is in there when you walk in.
>Stuffed right up the back next to fricking underwear.
>They have like three shelves.
>It's all basically the impulse buy kind of stuff like those fricking "dig up a minecraft rock" shit.
I think they are dead. I don't see a living entity when I behold this. I just see the wriggling of maggots.
In Bristol, they have the "BELONG" gaming Internet cafes "arenas". The actual shop sells hardware and merch.
The modern GAME/CeX is fricking depressing, a microcosm of the UK.
>Gaming is more mainstream now than ever before
>Game releases are far more frequent
>Older titles are wanted more now than almost ever before
How is GAME so lackluster is what I'm curious about.
Last time I was there 1/3 of the store was for phones, 1/3 was for miscellaneous merchandise like Zelda earbuds, plushies etc. and finally they had 1 wall that kept the xbox, PS5 and Switch games.
CEX has a bigger selection in a smaller store.
I'm upset I'll probably never get to experace a midnight launch again, you got to see the biggest weirdos there.
I worked in a toy shop and we did a midnight release for fifa and literally fricking no one turned up
Like the other Anons said GAME is essentially just being used to flip brick and mortar by their holding company these days, they aren't actually focused on being successful it's just about remaining barely solvent until then. Even so, the only way to really compete is by doing what Argos is doing which is essentially being cheaper than amazon and next day delievery. The only normalgays shopping in brick and mortar are either old c**ts, have no internet connection or are druggies, typically.
They only tend to sell the newest releases and a random assortment of kids toys now. There's no reason to go there over Argos or Symths if you absolutely have to buy a game in person.
I doubt they even get the grandparent buying a gift card for their gamer grandkid market anymore since 90% of them got shoved into the back of a Sports Direct.
Imagine playing games at 50hz.
No wonder all you yuros have fricked brains
You're showing your age a bit there anon, I don't think thats been a thing for almost 20 years.
The one I live near in Ayshire is still there. I haven't been to it in years though since I'm fine with Steam and emulation.
>not dead
If I have to walk into the back of a discount sports shop to browse a minute selection, they are very much dead
>go to my local 2 weeks ago, it's closing down (getting shafted into sports direct)
>hadn't been for 4+ years, realized online retailers were just better yet remember store semi fondly as it hadn't changed much from when i was a kid
>walk in. holy shit
>immediately shitty kids toys, lego, merch, board/card games and everything inbetween filling my eyes
>store had been refurbished around ps4/xbox one launch to have xbox completely on the left side of store, playstation on the right, and nintendo in the middle isles
>now xbox and playstation share the right, nintendo got a single section of the 4 isle shelves, rest is lego and "gamer holiday gifts" like those shitty light up leds
>walk around the tiny game section of game, pick out a game from pre-owned section, almost trip over the bin of among us and pokemon plushies, get into queue
>more comes into view as i notice a cooler with red bull and that prime energy taking up one of the 2 till spaces, mobile phone sims, a pitiful pc section with shitty Razer bogwater, and books like "gamers guide to fortnite" and diary of a wimpy kid (??)
>get to counter after 10 mins of waiting, at this point need to get out of there
>dude rattles off about game reward cards, elite membership, offer they're doing to get 15 percent extra trade in value, you name it
>say no to the lot, pay and walk off
>as i leave i hear a large crash and some wailing, one of the little kids running around the store smashed headfirst into the plushie bin
>look up game i bought on amazon later on, was £10 cheaper on there
Sports Direct fricked over GAME so much. I genuinely cannot fathom why the "throw enough shit at the wall until it sticks" thing was ever greenlit. If I wanted to go to a toy store I'd go to Smyths and even then usually when I buy a game from them I'm not hounded for additions like you get in GAME. Might honestly be for the best for them to go bankrupt at this point, it's too late.
I genuinely think the only times I've gone into Game in the last decade and made it to the till were to pick up free codes for distribution Pokémon. Oh, and a free TCG card. It's been dogshit for so long that I barely remember it being good. The GameStation takeover was probably the beginning of the end, so many towns had 3+ Game stores at the end of the 2000s
GAME has been overpriced for a very long time to the point where they sell second hand games for more than they are brand new on sites like amazon if you buy in store. The prices are a meme. I've only been to one decent over the years which unfortunately closed precisely because it wasn't a predatory shithole but old school.
Gamestop should change its name back to Funcoland cause thats all they sell now
what
Miss you Grainger Games
Miss it as well. There’s a nice local indie nerd shop that sells games including ancient rarities for collectors and I’m glad it’s still afloat.
Forbidden Planet bros, how are we doing?
>CEX selling ten year old second hand sticks of ram
I refuse to believe that anybody is actually buying this