My issue with GAME

Once in a blue moon, I actually buy my games from a brick and mortar store. The UK (and the rest of the world, to be honest) has been losing high street games retailers, to the digital distribution mammoths (Steam, Amazon, etc) and their slightly smaller and odd nephews (see: EA’s Origin). Offering lower prices than their physical counterparts, these online retailers have been whittling away at the competition, causing a drop in sales of physical media. No longer will you find a standard edition of a game that contains the printed manual of old, and instead, all the physical goods come in the over-priced collected/limited/deluxe/SUCKA editions.

Now I can see why physical shops are failing. We’ve been spoiled for too long, by these instant-purchase methods, where you enter a string of numbers into your screen, and suddenly the game’s downloading onto your computer. It’s a great method that appeals to those most likely to play PC games i.e. youthful technophiles. I went into GAME back in summer 2012 to pre-order Assassin’s Creed III for my brother. If you pre-ordered on July 4th (Independence Day) you got a bunch of branded collectibles (ACIII T-Shirt, lanyard, badge-y/emblem-y thing (you get the idea)), which would be a nice addition for a birthday present, so I thought I’d get the Join or Die Collector’s Edition for PC (my family’s a bunch of PC-lovers).

The PC release of ACIII rolled around on Friday just gone. Despite the fact that the branch I pre-ordered from (Oxford Street) had closed, the pre-order had been moved to Hamleys. Lovely. I really do enjoy pushing my way through a sea of whales and their spawn only a month before Christmas. Strike one.

I turn up in the rain on the Saturday to find that the game has not even been delivered to the store yet and that they don’t know when it’ll be in stock. They only hold copies for 48hrs, so if I’m late to pick it up, they’ll sell it to the horde – “Come back on Monday” they say. I get back and realise that it’d be a good idea to leave my number with them. After 30 minutes of Googling and 10 minutes of conversations with automated phone-bots, I got nowhere and was charged for the pleasure. Strike two. I pop in on Monday, as I’ve no lectures till late – they take down my number and suggest I go and talk to one of their reps through their webchat service (which isn’t available during the weekend, FYI). During my chat with “Charlie”, we covered that I’d done nothing wrong, but there’s a very good chance that my pre-order had been sent to their Camden store instead. In other words, the game that I had started paying for, had been moved to another store without my knowledge and then, when I didn’t arrive on the other side of London to pick up the game, they sold it off. Charlie didn’t know when any store would be getting new stock and as my preorder was conducted in-store, I couldn’t get it transferred to an online purchase, forcing me to buy it online instead. Aaaaaaaaaaaannnd strike three!

I’m gonna have a nice long complain to customer services. I think I’ll stick to the Steam sales for now. All the paranoia in the world about not having physical media can’t stop me from emptying my wallet into Gaben’s accounts.

Now I can see why their breed is dying off. Maybe they’ll follow the path of the record store. Good riddance.

Deposit: £5. Travelling: £8. Phone calls: 96p . Having your game sold to someone else without your knowledge: priceless.