GAME Enters Administration

After a turbulent few weeks, GAME Group Plc €“ the parent company of GAME and Gamestation and the largest videogames retail chain in the UK €“ entered administration on Monday 26th March. PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers) have been appointed as GAME's administrators, and are currently dealing with the company's insolvency and debt issues, which run into the tens of millions of pounds. Following the suspension of their shares from the London Stock exchange last week, GAME were pushed over the edge by a £21m rent bill that was due last weekend on top of £40m in existing debts to suppliers. The GAME Rewards Card, GAMEWallet and GAME gift card schemes are all currently suspended (though buyers can continue to collect points on their Rewards Cards as usual), and as of Monday evening Game.co.uk and Gamestation.co.uk were both down for maintenance and displaying holding pages from their administrators promising to resume normal service shortly. GAME Group are currently unable to offer refunds or product exchanges, and are no longer accepting pre-orders. You can still trade in games in exchange for other items, but they are currently not accepting hardware trade ins or cash exchanges. On the same day, GAME Group announced they will be closing 277 of their 610 UK stores, resulting in over 2,000 staff redundancies. There was some good news trickling in on Monday morning as PwC announced interest from several companies interested in buying up the struggling GAME brand, possibly under a different name and admittedly in a slimmed-down version of the current company. Their main lenders, RBS, are one of the companies expressing interest in acquiring the chain. Our thoughts are with the staff.