GAME will no longer accept in-store pre-orders for upcoming games, Eurogamer can confirm. The latest change to hit the brand will see GAME end in-store pre-orders in a matter of weeks.
As of 1st August, no new in-store pre-orders will be accepted and all existing pre-orders will be refunded for products set to be released after 31st January 2025.
Any existing pre-order or deposit for a product set to be launched before the end of January 2025 will still be honoured. There’s no change to online pre-orders.
The news, first reported today by TechRadar Gaming, was passed to store staff in a memo earlier this week. Eurogamer has been contacted by GAME staff about the changes, and has contacted the brand’s owner Frasers Group for comment.
The change is yet another casualty of GAME’s ongoing homogenisation with the wider Frasers Group – something that has been a familiar story this year.
Eurogamer previously reported on how GAME was ending the ability to trade-in products and buy pre-owned games, shuttering its long-running membership scheme and ending its support for Xbox All Access. These moves are all designed to simplify its offering for the many GAME concessions that now exist within other Frasers Group stores, such as Sports Direct.
A persistent issue here has been the bespoke tills that GAME used, Eurogamer understands, which had to accomodate a huge library of pre-owned products and handle GAME-specific customer rewards. Rather than updating these, Frasers Group has instead opted to remove GAME-specific offerings.
“Going forward the tills will only be able to sell and return products,” a GAME staff member with knowledge of the changes told Eurogamer today. “No trade-ins, no rewards, no pre-orders, no Xbox All Access, no ‘endless aisle’ (the ability to order to store).”
Last month, GAME denied it would stop selling physical games outright.