GAME to end video game trade in from next month – Confirmed by Frasers Group

Update 17/01 – It has now been confirmed that UK retail chain Game will be phasing out trade ins and pre-owned game sales through the next few months as the company is tied more deeply with the rest of the Frasers Group.

In a statement to the BBC, a spokesperson for Frasers Group said, “As part of the integration of Game, we will be phasing out the trade-in, pre-owned and Game Elite offerings in the UK over the coming months.

“Pre-owned will still be available in our standalone stores across the UK while stock lasts, and Game Elite will still be available until the end of summer.”

Frasers Group is the parent company of a number of UK chains, including House of Fraser, Sports Direct, Jack Wills, Evans Cycles and more. Previously trading under the Sports Direct brand, it acquired House of Fraser in 2019 after the department store chain went into administration, taking on the trading name Frasers Group in the process.

The original story follows.

Eurogamer are reporting that UK high street retailer GAME is to end it’s video game trade in program next month on 16th February. All remaining pre-owned games will continued to be sold until they are gone.

This means CEX will be the only major UK retailer accepting pre-owned games, that is unlikely to change as CEX’s whole business is built on pre-owned stock but it does mean that, as the only major high street chain offering the service, they have a monopoly on the prices they can set. There are online alternatives such as Music Magpie but they  are not as easy as walking in to a shop and trading in your old games.

GAME have not officially announced the change but it’s not hard to work out why, the market for physical video games has plummeted on all platforms apart from the Nintendo Switch. Last year 82% of Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI, Diablo 4 and F1 2023 sales were digital on the week on launch.

There are issues going digital only and this was highlighted recently when content provider Discovery decided to end it’s license with PlayStation, resulting in hundreds of shows that were to be removed from the owners library. Although Sony got a lot of criticism for this it wasn’t actually their fault, the Terms of Service on many platforms state that if a content provider decides to remove the content, the platform itself is under no obligation to reimburse anyone who had purchased the content. All this is covered in the Terms of Service that everyone accepts by default and clicks through. Here’s an example from Apple’s TOS

Content also may be removed from our Services at any time (for instance, because the provider removed it), after which it cannot be downloaded, redownloaded, or otherwise accessed from Apple.

After a few days of outrage Sony did manage to get Discovery to update their license and the content remains online.

Source: Eurogamer

Tags: Game