Long-time UK games retailer GAME won’t be accepting trade-ins when February 16 rolls around, according to Eurogamer. GAME’s parent company Frasers Group has officially confirmed its plans to remove the trade-in program to BBC News on Tuesday.
“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,” said a spokesperson of Frasers Group to BBC News. This effectively hands off mainstream game trading to CEX, a popular used media retailer in the British Isles.
The remaining pre-owned stock that GAME has acquired will be available on store shelves while they last. It will be curious to see how long copies of disappointing titles like Anthem and old sports games will remain in GAME before it throws them out. Frasers Group hasn’t given an official reason for this decision, but it’s likely due to lacking sales in the used game market.
“PlayStation and Xbox were not as big a part of the sales as they were [due to supply constraints],” said GAME CEO Nick Arran to GamesIndustry.biz in 2023. “But our toy business really came into its own, with staggering numbers at Christmas.”
GAME could be switching gears to toys and other similar goods like Pokemon cards instead of its video game titles as gamers look towards an all-digital future. Ars Technica reported in 2022 a 30% drop in available physical games from 321 in 2018 to 226 in 2021. It was also leaked that the next Xbox Series X refresh called Brooklin might be digital only.
Perhaps GAME sees the writing on the wall as the gaming industry slowly moves past a used game model, which used to have 100 million titles traded in every year in the US alone.
