GAME Exits Administration

40
Lee Bradley

After a bit of flirting, OpCapita got its man. Administrator PwC has confirmed that the Comet owner has bought GAME UK.

Well, more specifically Baker Acquisitions Limited bought GAME UK, but advisors OpCapita pull the strings. The news means that all of GAME's UK assets, including the 333 GAME and Gamestation stores that are currently open, will remain so.

Now out of administration, GAME will be provided with the money it needs to "trade on a normalised basis" with nearly 3200 jobs saved, according to Baker Acquisitions. There are no plans for any further store closures.

In addition to this, Baker will also seek to re-employ a "small number" of staff made redundant from GAME's head office last week.

Although the exact terms of the deal were not revealed, it is thought that GAME UK was purchased for just £1. That may seem like nothing, but any buyer has to take on the company's debts, no less than £85 million, hence the cheap price.

Still though, it's odd to think that the next game you buy at GAME could cost up to fifty times the price of the company itself.

In the cold, hard terms of an administrator, PwC partner Mike Jervis said, "This means that the GAME brand will not be another one of the retail names disappearing from the high street in the current difficult climate."

Hurrah!

Comments
40
  • I once bought a car for $1, but it didn't come with £85 Million in debt attached to it. Best of luck to these buyers.
  • good news at last
  • Happy day
  • Now they just need to sort out their prices to compete with other retailers!! Good on then for re-replying redundant staff
  • well least it hasent become another woolworths i suppose.
  • Awwww yeah! Such good news. Not only for us gamers, but for the ex-employees who may be getting new jobs! Should be heading to the mall soon to pick up a PS3 (still keeping my 360. I just want MGS4), so I may take a bottle of bubbly to celebrate!
  • Happy to hear this!
  • Now I won't have to use CEX :)
  • This is potentially very good news for the high street. It's nice that they are potentially looking to re-employ a small number of staff from the head office, but weren't those the guys who got the company in the shite in the first place? Replacing them and giving some jobs back at street level might be a better business strategy.... With any luck this will turn out to be a proper save for both GAME and Gamestation rather than just a reprieve. They still have to turn that debt around and start trading more competitively or they'll just end up back in the same situation.
  • Still will buy games online for a cheaper price and early/on time delivery. GAMEs biggest source of income is probably mums and dads buying games for their kids because no well seasoned gamer would buy anything at those rip off prices. I only used GAME/Gamestation for console purchases or trade ins on game with online passes because you get more in store than ebay.
  • Very happy to hear this, maybe if one of the stores would re-open they will need more staff for hire...heres hoping.
  • Great news!
  • Awsome for those ppl who got paid redundancy and then get their job back.
  • Hopefully they'll make changes in the stores and wont sell preowned games for stupid prices
  • they need to cut loads of job and close loads of duplicate stores in the same town/city by saying no more jobs will be cut jsut makes me think they are as stupid as Game were already. stop paying 16's olds thousands of pounds to steal your stock from too many shops in the same place and just make constant loss to your business.
  • so the ones that shut will stay shut? thats good, because in my town, the Game was awfully run by a wanker manager. the Gamestation is awesome however, and they stayed open
  • My friend said he bought a mercedes for £1 but I call BULLSHIT.
  • Hopefully the stores will reopen, people will get there jobs back, hoping they starting hiring again since jobs are hard enough to find as it is! As for people complaining about prices the reason why retail games are so expensive is because of the stupid people who order all their stuff online, complain constantly. If places like game go then you can kiss midnight releases. Remember those nights queing up for halo 3 on release? nights like that will be gone, then the online market will have trapped you, you'll be stuck with whatever they want to charge you, because the retail stores will slowly go they will over charge. There already on about putting more taxes on online stores.
  • The branch of GAME in the town I live was also run by a very arrogant guy and it got closed down - I always found Gamestation a little, well, grimey. Full of preowned stuff seemingly stolen by chavs or owned by people who seemed to handle their games in the same hand they wee eating a dirty great sandwich from at the same time. Logos / stickers and print media was alwas a little classier from GAME, despite it's ludicrious penchant for trying to ram preowned goods down your throat when you tried to buy a new game.
  • I'm glad GAME has been saved. Yet i hope they learn from past mistakes. Here in Plymouth we have 2 GAME and one Gamestation, all just a short 2 minute walking distance from one another. The overheads must be insane. There is no need for this insanity, especially considering the economy isn't and will likely not get better any time soon.
  • @20 I remember that from my time when I was living in Plymouth. I always thought it was strange. I take it your GTag is for Argyle? Lol.
  • Like buying a dilapidated house from the council in a run-down area for £1, with the condition that you have tens of thousands available to do it up.
  • Finally you ditched Sonic and the balloons lol This is fantastic news what a bargain !
  • dam, the games and employees are worth more than the company just now.
  • Are they offering people their pre order money though or is it still lost. If they want to keep the fans (if any?) they should look at things like that.
  • @5 Woolworths Pik'n'Mix! You know the online Woolworths store sells Pik'n'Mixes? Imagine that shit, getting a Pik'n'Mix in the mail all hard and nasty.
  • Still surprised people are commenting on having a game and gamestation near one another... considering they where rivals originally. And great, the people who own comet... because we know how good they are at pricing games... perfect point... Medal Of Honor Frontline... 5 years after its release... £30... wtf... I see less chance of the staff being replaced by gamers now, just more sales people, yey. ¬_¬
  • heres hoping my local Game staff get re-hired
  • Glad to hear that over 3000 jobs have been saved. Great news thaat we will still have a high street retailer that specializes in consoles and games. Let's hope that the companies fortunes turn around and that they can be succesful once again. My local Gamestation has closed :( and the 2 Games stores remain open. Just hope the quality is better than the smashed game cases I saw in there the other day.
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85cL1HisrNc
  • I imagine they'll rebrand all Gamestation stores GAME now. Even Joe Average knows they're the same company now plus most places only have one or the other now.
  • @18 You’re mistaken on several accounts….and I’ll correct you yet again in another topic about GAME. Retail games are NOT so expensive because people buy them cheaply online. Where do you get that idea? Online prices are lower due to lower overhead it takes to run a website over a full retail branch. Buying games online DOES NOT increase the prices at retail stores. People complain about the prices at GAME because they are marked UP over the retail price of every other store. I don’t know the currency exchange, so I’ll use US dollars as an example. Nearly every retail store in the US charges $60 for a new game. If GAME was a US chain, they would be charging $65 for every new title. THAT is why people bitch about their high retail prices…because they mark them up. And that is why they went bankrupt. Don’t know why I bother trying to correct you over and over, as you simply either don’t read the comments or think you know more than everyone else. Midnight releases were fun….back in high school and what not. I still go to them if I’m off work the next morning just so I can start playing games that night, but they aren’t nearly as enjoyable as the “good old days”. They might be for the younger crowd, but it doesn’t appear so in my area. @18 tl;dr : Internet prices DO NOT raise retail prices. That’s not how the world works. GAME over-charged for games previously, hence the bankruptcy. People are bitching about their ABOVE retail prices, which again, are not caused by Internet prices.
  • WOO! Comet! The only shop other than HMV with higher prices than GAME
  • Game was bought for £50m not £1
  • Atleast my Work Experience will still be going on, hopefully :D
  • I still don't think they're gonna get out of this. From whatvive heard their prices are higher than everybody else's, and if they still aren't stocking games by certain devs that's just more money they're gonna loose. And on top of that they pissed a lot of people off with what's been happening lately so they've probably lost a pretty good chunk of their client base and they have. And if that wasn't enough they have a huge amount of debt to pay off so I'm calling it now, GAME is done for
  • This is fantastic news! So glad that they are out of administration and all those jobs are safe.
  • good news but i think they should make changes to have a good future
  • Ugh honestly I was looking forward to not having GAME around, happy for the people keeping their jobs but I am still pissed about losing my special edition of Mass Effect 3.
  • woooooo... Party at my place (be there or be square)
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