Updated 17/01 – It has now been confirmed that UK retailer Game will gradually phase out the trade-in and sale of second-hand games over the coming months, as the company becomes more closely linked to the rest of the Frasers Group.
In a statement to the BBCa 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 offering in the UK over the coming months.
“Used will still be available in our standalone stores in the UK while stocks last, and Game Elite will still be available until the end of the 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. The company previously traded under the Sports Direct brand and acquired House of Fraser in 2019 after the department store chain went into administration, adopting the trading name Frasers Group.
The original story follows.
Eurogamer reports that British retailer GAME will end its video game trade-in program next month, on February 16. All other second-hand games are sold until they are gone.
This means that CEX will be the only major UK retailer to accept second-hand games, which is unlikely to change as CEX’s entire business is built on second-hand stock, but it does mean that, as the only major retailer to offer the service, they have a monopoly on the prices they can set. There are online alternatives such as Music Magpie but they’re not as simple as walking into a store and trading in your old games.
GAME hasn’t officially announced the change yet, but it’s not hard to see why the physical video game market has plummeted on all platforms except the Nintendo Switch. Last year, 82% of sales of Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI, Diablo 4 and F1 2023 were digital in the week of launch.
There are digital-only issues and this was highlighted recently when content provider Discovery decided to end its license with PlayStation, resulting in hundreds of shows having to be removed from the owner’s library. Although Sony received a lot of criticism for this, it wasn’t actually their fault. Many platforms’ Terms of Service state that if a content provider decides to remove the content, the platform itself is not obligated to refund anyone who purchased the content. contents. All this is laid down in the Terms of Service that everyone accepts and clicks through by default. Here’s an example from Apple’s TOS
Content may also be deleted from our Services at any time (for example, because the provider has deleted it), at which time it may no longer be downloaded, re-downloaded, or otherwise accessible through Apple.
After a few days of outrage, Sony did manage to get Discovery to give up their license and the ccontent remains online.
Source: Eurogamer