News GAME Group struggles under financial pressure

Not to interrupt your corpse-pissing, but for some reason all I could visualise was *emo hair flick*







...which kinda goes against your actually quite sweet avatar.

 

Again, this is due to the fact that until recently, Gamestation were still run buy their own staff inc regonials so they didn't have all the targets and crap to meet.

The reason Game staff push hard on attachments and warrenties is because if they dont hit their targets, its on their head and goes on record that they are failing targets. It's not they are not into gaming or don't like talking about games, they just get punished for doing so; if you get into a convo with a member of staff at game, give it 5 minutes and either a manager or someone sent by the manager will come over and say something like "<X person> needs you to do <Y task> in the back" or some other excuse.

My guess is they will close stores that have multiple of the same brand near each other starting with the smallest of the stores, or if there is just 1 of each brand, the Gamestation will go. Gamestation stores are now being brought into line in terms of training and targets. It will take a while, but you will see a decline in "friendlyness" as you guys like to call it in the gamestation staff as they are forced to just make money and hit targets. It lowers staff moral and it shows.

 

It's always cheaper to buy stuff off steam, amazon, play or ebay so why go into game? When I walk in there I always feel like it's a shop for mugs, who don't realise pretty well everything is available for less elsewhere.

 

Haha made me smile! In a previous rebellious stage. Not quite "emo" as such but i could do one hell of a hair flick that would put herbal essence models to shame.

That admission has probably helped me become the community hermit now who smells of wee and is to be shunned and looked upon with scorn. I assure you, i dont smell of wee.....

 

I hope it doesn't go belly up.

It the only shop worth visiting in the local shopping outlet (it's one of those VAT free outlets full of clothes shops) and I've never had any issues ordering online via their website.

 

In stockport,game and gamestation are next to each other.

 

Yup, Stockport store is one of the ones I have worked at. Very nice store, my favourite one I've worked in by far.

 

Having worked a lot of retail, I know how this goes - business slides, idiot managers say "ZOMG SERVICE IS KING!" and so you service the hell out of customers (heh-heh) Then they realize good service is expensive and start cutting the labor budget, and you have to jump through hoops pushing this thing or that thing, no matter if you're just pissing customers off, you gotta hit those numbers to keep your job (that's what got me canned from the last retail job I held with a corp chain retailer - I hate that myself, so I wouldn't do it to customers.)

They aren't raping you and swimming in cash - prices are high because (I'm guessing, I've never been to the UK) High Street rents are high. Prices are high because overhead is high (even though employees are treated and paid like crap, leading to disinterested employees.) Then you check your smartphone, see their own site is selling it cheaper and they won't match the price in store (employees generally have zero discretion on pricing and are likely explicitly forbidden from price-matching online retailers.) Naturally, you think they must be morons and buy it from Amazon (but remember, it's not the clerk's fault - he'd knock a couple bucks off if it meant saving his job, rather than losing it.) You don't even need to match it, just do something so I don't think you're an asshole - having it in my hands, knowing I'm half an hour away from playing it (rather than a day and a half from Steam [slow internet] or 2-3 days from Amazon) is very powerful. Until you can't do a damn thing for me whatsoever on the price and I get pissed and leave. Now you'll likely never see another dime from ever...good job, corporate middle-managers!

What's telling to me is that every big-corp retail job I held, every single one of the companies went bankrupt and out of business. If only I could take credit, I could blackmail my way to easy street - "pay me now or I'll get a job at one of your stores. Next thing you know, the whole chain will be out of business! BWA HAAHAHA")

Anyway, that sound anything close to right, Omnituens?

Oh, and 'lending syndicate'? I guess that's what you get when you get financed by the Mafia

 

Well the one local to me has a decent sized PC section, and I live in a town.

If you look at thier online store its full of PC games and decent prices on them too. but PC games isnt the reason why they are struggling

games in general are expesnive ( looks at 360/ps3) so its partly greedy devs also becasue most people in the uk are only getting £80 per week benafits Ie out of a job. most people torrent games mostly for that reason that does include consles

 

i dont see why everyone is blaming the staff and referring 2 them as monkeys. at the end of the day its a job, it pays the bills...
Plus dont go tarring all game stores with the same brush. they not all rubbish with staff that dont give a f***. some of us actually care about the customers and want them to go away happy with their purchases no matter how much they spent. i no in my store we have staff that actually are gamers and theres always someone there to speak to that knows their stuff about each platform.
if u want 2 blame anyone blame the ones that come up with our KPI's.
plus we did get paid on the day we were supposed to it just went in late. and it did happen a few years ago also so that doesnt mean anything.
game used to buy in far 2 many new releases and ended up losing money on them. now they have started covering preorders and a few 4 general sale (and rightly so i think). if u dont preorder it then tough s***.
the range and volume of pc games a store receives is based on previous sales. if they werent selling much of it then they stopped sending as much. simples!
to be honest, we know as much as u guys... they will close the stores that make the least money..which makes sense!

 

Mobile phones are often cheaper in store. Certainly with orange theyre very quick to try and cut a deal if you threaten to move. Heck i got 25% discount going in store with my civil service friend in tow which i couldnt get online or over the phone. Yea the occasional online deal crops up and when pointed out the do seem to try and match it. Least in phone shops they let you play with devices too. The only time ive seen them stick on price is with p&g offers. Nothing will get them to move.

 

my local game store in workington cumbria always seems to have more staff than customers, and the pc games they sell now is pish.

 

Lets just wait for them to blame piracy for their demise.I am sure it won't be their failure to get in on digital distribution early enough.

 

Just to browse that 1 shelf of old PC games they never sold.