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Staff at UK retailer GAME are reportedly facing redundancies as the firm moves most of its workforce under zero hour contracts.
As reported by Eurogamer, it's not currently known how many employees will be laid off, but it's understood that all non-managerial staff will now be on zero hour contracts going forwards. For those who might not be familiar with the UK scheme, zero hour contracts offer up no guarantee of work for the employee, as the employer is not under any obligation to set a minimum number of working hours.
Employees under zero hour contracts are often called upon to work on an ad hoc basis, but are under no obligation to agree and can also seek work elsewhere if desired. While certainly a flexible option for many individuals, the zero hour contract has faced significant controversy in the UK over fears of exploitation and prolonged periods of no work. Holiday pay and sick leave is also contingent on the number of hours worked in previous weeks.
In a way, it almost comes as no surprise. House of Fraser, which now owns GAME after an acquisition in 2019, reportedly already utilises zero hour contracts for 90% of its staff in Sports Direct (though this may have changed in the time since this was initially reported). As for those at GAME who may be facing redundancy, it's understood that affected staff would be contacted via a separate email or telephone call.
Earlier this year, the retailer brought an end to its trade-in scheme, whereby customers could bring in their unwanted games or tech for discounts on new products. It's believed that this is largely due to the implementation of concession stores within Sports Direct, with only a select few standalone GAME stores remaining on the high street.
What do you make of this new development from GAME? Leave a comment with your thoughts in the usual place.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 62
Firstly zero hour contracts should be illegal. And secondly, all this is the unfortunate further proof of the writing being on the wall about the future of game purchases being fully digital.
One of my main visited shops on the high street over many, many years though I admit I mainly utilised it for trade-ins (as ebay buyers being bensons started to annoy me) and "old console trade in for new" transactions. Sad to see it go but Thanos-like inevitable really. Hope the employees find new work.
Zero hour contracts are bloody disgusting!
When an employer doesn't respect its employees, neither should we respect the employer. To all our friends from the UK: stop giving them your money.
I walk into my local and every time, the same toys are still there, mostly overpriced or not marked down enough (You tell me if £56.99 is a great deal for the Chun Li Power Rangers action figure.).
It really is on its last legs.
It's a shame I used the trade in all the time, especially to buy 2nd hand games that I wasn't too sure about so didn't want to pay full price. CEX will get more footfall now here in the UK.
It’s a shame that it’s come to this but I think it’s in keeping with what’s happened with other high street stores. It seems to be the way of it unfortunately.
This shop has served me well over years. I bought second hand copies of Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 on the Mega Drive from Electronics Boutique. It became GAME which was already a separate company if I have that correct.
I got most of my Wii U games in store, Mario Maker with the 8-bit amiibo and Hyrule Warriors with the scarf.
Game has been on a steady decline for years the shops at the moment look like a jumble sale and games have kinda taken a backseat to all the merchandise and general tat they sell but they don’t help themselves they are quite high priced compared to Smyths or Argos which where I live they are all within walking distance of each other you can save yourself serious cash just by checking all the stores when buying a new game
The one in my town is hidden upstairs part of another shop that's for buying clothes.
@bones mine is in the corner of the top of a Sports Direct.
Game didn't have a chance with their horrible pricing.
Basically contractors at that point. No holiday or sick pay
such a shame. the 'Arena' area in my local seems to be doing well and i've always collected pre-orders in person but you can tell they've been spiralling as there aren't anywhere near enough staff to deal with the Arena stuff and the till at the same time. i don't blame the staff there at all - they've been really lovely but just seem overstretched and under-appreciated at the minute.
@olliemar28 UK workers on zero hour contracts are actually supposed to receive holiday pay and SSP. Holiday entitlement is pro rated based on the number of hours worked (but I think it caps at a normal full time pay period - so you can't work for 60 hours/week and get more holiday entitlement than a full time worker)
I think SSP is available after like 3 months of employment or something (it doesn't have to be continuous work during that 3 months, they should still be employed as long as they haven't received a written termination of their contract)
Source: I am a zero hour contractor and I did all this research on gov.uk
However the reality is that some employers aren't always aware of the law and even if they are, they don't care that much and can get away with intimidation tactics so they don't get caught out.
Not saying it's good or bad, that's just the law plus my own anecdotal experience.
@ralphdibny didnt realise that, good info - and good for the staff at least as they shouldnt be forced into being a 'contractor'
@ralphdibny Yeah you're right, I've tweaked it slightly.
While I'm sad to see yet another retailer almost gone in general, I'm not surprised considering what I've heard about them and not that sad for them specifically considering their "solution" is employing zero hour contracts!
Sorry for the employee's. I used to be a manager of a Gamestation store and got out before Game acquired them.
In my opinion, it has been in decline since. Push on targets selling tat that people don't want or need, less competitive, not run by gamers and pretty bad treatment of staff.
Hope the employee's affected find work and those that are left, find better jobs with stable contracts.
Zero hour contracts should be banned.
@Olliemar28 cool I'll leave my comment up in case it's helpful to any other long suffering zero hour contractors! 😀
They need to scrap zero hour contracts its such BS
Game was brill during the xbox360 and ps3, wii era. Always traded in for the next game. For better or worse games going forward are digital. Near enough every game now has a patch how big or small but hey ho xxxx
@Duncanballs man Gamestation used to be brilliant! Was so sad when it left
I agree with others, this company has been in decline for years. Many years ago I couldn't walk past a Game/Gamestation without having a look, haven't been in much since they started making the place look like a pawn shop, full of phones and tech.
Zero hour contracts - Shameless practise
I haven’t bought anything from Game in years (every new game is usually £10-15 more expensive in Game than at other retailers, well, Argos), and since Electronics Boutique bought them out, they started doing pressure upselling. BUT! I think it’s sad to see the end of games being a visible part of the typical high street. Someone who’d time travelled to today from 1984, 1994 or 2004 would assume that games are extinct as a pastime, given their complete lack of visibility at regular retail.
Anyway, yes, ban zero hours contracts! Horrible exploitative anti-worker arrangements.
@quinnyboy58 It was indeed. I felt like our stores were the local community of gamers. Great staff, great customers, great times.
The Game has never been good value, not since it's high street competition was wiped out. Then CeX stole a lot of it's thunder. The one advantage Game has over CeX is that CeX don't sell new releases but Game are never competitive with new releases prices. The most you can expect is a free poster or keyring along with the full price game 🎮
@Duncanballs it's so sad that my kids will never know that community spirit of gaming so much today has been lost!
I’m from Ireland. Game ceased operations here about a decade ago to save the UK mothership, giving GameStop a huge share of the market. GameStop shut down here last year. Sad sign of the times. Brick and mortar retail gives a lot of young people necessary work experience. That said, zero contracts are appalling. I was put on 1 at the start of the pandemic.
They’ve always been a pretty vile company. Heard some horror stories from workers. I’m just gutted that they pushed out the independent games store in Glasgow, I’d much rather have given them my money than Game.
My local GAME closed down a couple of months ago and now i dont have any reason to go in to my town. There is a CEX but the prices of their used games, especially newer released ones are disgusting and it smells like sweaty, grubby, dirty old men. GAME did used to be slightly higher on the new release side of things but i was enrolled in the Elite program and very often would get £10 back in points for a new release game. You could also grab some great sales in there too. I got a BN PS5 copy of resi4 for £20 4 months after release and when they were just clearing stock of wii games i got Fire emblem for £3 and sold it on ebay for £70 within 2 hours.
Now our local town is full of pound shops, charity shops a d Eastern European supermarkets. I remember when i was a kid (41 now) getting so exited to go to town on a Saturday and look at all the games and toys. God bless Woolworths 🙏. Such a shame.
Soon as GAME announced that they would no longer be selling pre-owned stock, I knew it was over for them. 90% of their profits came from pre-owned sales alone. Without that they can't survive.
@FragRed Why should they be illegal? People are under no obligation to accept a job with a zero-hours contract, and it's nice for those who want to work flexibly. Such as students or parents.
As soon as Mick Ashley took over and SportsDirect got a hold of them, it was the end.
@steruphan No one does give them their money, that's probably why this is happening. GAME is the last major video game retailer in the UK, and it's probably going bust this year, so once it goes, the UK is pretty much bound to go 100% digital for video games.
The owner is Mike Ashley (MASH holdings), says it all!!
@xeno_aura
Absolute rubbish! GAME is the last major video game retailer in the UK on the HIGH STREET. There are many online, thegamecollection.net et al so the UK is not going digital!!
Damn, the hours I spent in my local Game back in my yoof were great. Even worked there for a while. But it's just depressing now. It's basically a toy shop these days. My aforementioned local one always had three aisles and it used to be an aisle each for the three main players. Now it's two aisles of expensive toys and all the games crammed into one. We all know its days are numbered and have been for a while.
Plus, zero hour contracts are morally outrageous. They should be illegal. Shame on the people who use them in their companies.
For everybody here hating on zero-hour contracts, ask yourselves what the alternative is. Because the realty is that the alternative is not having a job at all. Here at least the employee has some opportunity for performing paid work without having to apply and be hired. And in the meantime they can still do other work and they're free to quit completely. It's not a great situation, no, but it's better than just losing their job completely.
I was talking about this recently but it feels like we're starting to see game shops go the way of video rentals, with digital outpacing physical to the point that the latter becomes unsustainable. I was in GAME a couple of weeks ago and it was mainly game-related merchandise for sale as opposed to games themselves. Still, on a human level, it's a horrible example of exploitative zero-hours contracts leaving people facing such financial uncertainty.
@Angelic_Lapras_King you are so right, every time i walk in i expect to be wowed by their "Sale", i leave emptyhanded because the prices are still eyewatering
@Gamergirl94 it will never happen sadly because the Government can point and say "look unemployment figures are low", without Zero Hour contracts that figure would be scarily high.
I'd almost forgotten that Game existed until the other week when I noticed they'd been banished to the basement of Sports Direct. Naturally I had a quick mooch, but all the games were being sold at their RRP, there was almost nothing in the way of offers or discounts; even second hand items were only marginally cheaper. It's sad, but it really doesn't surprise me that digital/online takes the lions' share of sales
I had a zero hours contract job at a gallery for a number of years, but it was my own choice as the role was in addition to my own freelance work and I could pick up hours when I needed them and didn't need to work if I was busy with my own freelance work. To unilaterally make your employees have a Zero Hours contract is not good!
Popped I to my local game at the weekend and the videogames definitely felt like an afterthought. Although the prices on the toys and games were slashed across the board. Picked up a couple of bargains to add to my niece and nephew's birthday present.
GAME will be no more in 12 to 18 months time.
Such a shame as it used to be so good going into them in the 90's and early noughties but unfortunately times have changed.
Difficult to say when it was peak GAME but it's incredible how things are now in the high street compared to a decade ago.
I popped in on Saturday just gone at 11am, on which you would think would be their busiest day of the week. I was the only one in that time... I can't see it lasting much longer. I give it another Christmas then see it closing say Late Jan next year once they have sold off remaining stock in a January firesale..
GAME really started to turn a corner after the management buyout, and seemed to have a solid strategy based on Waterstones success (become a physical hubs for events, wide aisle pleasant shopping experience, happier staff with reasonable working conditions to interact with etc). But COVID hit that hard; and that moron Mike Ashley harder still. Swapped loyality scheme for a high APR credit line (FraserPlus), totally unsuitable to half the audience, got rid of second hand resale (a massively profitable bit of the shop that is a well suited to physical shops over online in many ways), moved into dark, crapped, get-stabbed-for-your-PS5-outside corners of horrid Sports Directs…and now is squeezing the staff. He’ll run it into the ground, selling Chinese clothing tat at barrel scrapping prices is not the same market as video games retailers.
Mike Ashley can go get in the sea.
@Kidfunkadelic83 Your local town sounds a lot like mine here in Kent. It must be widespread now in the UK. I used to love killing a few hours wondering around in HMV, Woolworths and Game.
The high street is definitely dying
Some bargains in there when I went in at the weekend. They were doing 50% off lowest price, which effectively meant games like Demon's Souls, Ghost of Tsushima and Horizon Forbidden West on the PS5 were £15 each. Whatever their history, I'm glad to have a gaming shop on the high street among all the cafes and clothes shops.
Amazon and other online retailers are the future of physical. GAME can gladly die off.
@Ravenmaster If that was 90% of their profits they wouldn't have stopped selling used games.
@gamering they could be useful for trading in games. It's just easier than selling in eBay.
@Westlondonmist GAME was purchased a couple of years ago when it was about to go bust. Mike Ashley (founder of SportsDirect) bought GAME and closed down most of their standalone stores. He then opened mini concession GAME stores within his SportsDirect buildings to see if he could turn a profit by absorbing them. Turns out this was a failed business venture, so now he's winding the GAME section of his business down completely. First shutting down sales of pre-owned stock and now by getting rid of more staff. He's cutting his losses. GAME will be gone within a year or 2.
I'd say Mike Ashley completely misjudged the clientel of Game - perhaps not unreasonably he assumed that there was a huge cross over with his existing business because "games are just bought by chavvy teenage lads who want FIFA and COD" (this is the main target audience of Sports Direct).
..and maybe he was in some ways right - FIFA and COD do still dominate game sales in the UK. Who needs a big shop with diverse stock when you only really need 2-3 games on the shelves for most of your customers?
That said I'd guess that the high margins in the market are either driven by the more niche enthusiast market or now locked up digitally as micro-transactions that bricks and mortar stores can't access.
Most of the gaming community has taken to online sales for various reasons but in theory a good premium, community focused chain could take video games back to the high street. It would just have to look more like Waterstones - a larger destination store to experience, test and browse (with a cafe) - than GAME.
Mixed feelings on this one.
I did my two weeks’ work experience back at Game head office in the 90s, and then worked for both Game and Gamestation for several years — most of the titles I reviewed for Nintendo Life when we started came from Game and staff discount.
The mixed side is that Game really grew an unfortunate culture of not looking after its workers — as they diminished in the high street standings, so did their approach to their employees degrade. So many fond memories but also so much frustration.
@Visor you should play your copy of Beyond Good and Evil as homage to the passing of Game!
they’ve been a great source of surprisingly and in some cases shockingly cheap action figures/lego/transformers for the past year or so, they’ve had some great deals.
I’m still mad at them for the way they bought out and destroyed Gamestation. I used to live near an amazing 2 story one that stocked games from consoles as far back as it could get. After Game bought them the bottom floor was shut down then slowly half of it became Game branded peripherals before the whole thing shut and moved to a store about an 8th of the original size. I think it’s now at the back of Sports Direct.
But yeah this is unsurprisingly bad practice. I hope the staff affected are able to find somewhere better!
Just saw another report that everyone got told about the zero-hours BS after their “Cluster Managers” (four letters missing there methinks) were told about it in… a mass conference call over Teams.
Seriously, £₽₩$ GAME (expletive masked by currency symbols as they’re there only things Ashley cares about).
@stronglook The only thing I’ve seen anyone get in there that was interesting were some sets of PolyHero dice for a fiver apiece. For the uninitiated, these dice aren’t in your usual Platonic solid style, but themed to various RPG classes.
I used to back them over Kickstarter until they stiffed everyone outside the US over the Bard set.
@CarSickKitty CEX rules. If I see one in the town I’m in I always visit. The staff remind me of the ones from video rental/record shops in the 80s and 90s. They seem interested in the culture and almost always have time for a chat. I am enjoying them whilst they are still around. One of the last common High Street shops where the people working there (and visiting) seem invested in it. The only GAME stores I have been to are a bit sad. Just a small corner of a Sports Direct, that seem a bit neglected.
I stopped buying physical when digital was still widely snubbed by most.
I haven't stepped into a game shop of any kind for well over 5 years now.
@Xeno_Aura People that buy physical buy from Amazon, the Game Collection, Shopto, Simply Games, or other online stores. Very casual gamers, or non-gamers buying something for their kids or partner, will also buy from supermarkets like Tesco. GAME has been in a weird position for a very long time as more hardcore gamers bought stuff online, casual ones bought from Tesco, and both mainly bought digital anyway. It was never really clear who GAME was for as it's always been too expensive and with limited stock compared to online stores.
@Theghostofkeithmoon I agree with you, nothing I like than spending time in CEX.
After being on 0 hours in 2010 and going a month without a shift I vowed to never work in gaming retail again even then I knew it was a sinking ship
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