Beleagured high street chain GAME has begun auctioning off the fixtures and fittings from its Basingstoke head office and main warehouse, following the site’s recent closure as part of the company’s continued assimilation by its parent firm.
Eurogamer first reported on the closure of GAME’s headquarters earlier this week, with the expectation of job losses.
The move is yet another step in the brand’s demise as its own entity, as it becomes just another arm of the Frasers Group, which also owns House of Fraser and Sports Direct.
GAME’s Basingstoke facility had served as its headquarters for more than two decades. Now, dozens of office and kitchen items, warehouse equipment and a few more unusual oddities are all up for auction on bidding site NCM Auctions.
Items listed include a shopfloor pirate ship display unit for products from TY, the maker of Beanie Babies. That’s currently going for £40. Alternatively, you can buy the company’s breakroom football table for £120, or a perspex-fronted poster of CJ from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas for £30.
Several of the photos give a glimpse behind the scenes in the Basinstoke office – at its board rooms, where decisions like the one to sell Pokémon cards for almost triple the price, were presumably made. One meeting area has a poster for Destiny 2 expansion Forsaken on the wall. Another small room has a wall decorated with a mural of Nintendo characters.
The downside? The items are all collection only, so you’ll need to be in Basingstoke yourself later this month to pick them up. Suddenly GAME’s oversized £10.99 delivery price for those Pokémon cards doesn’t seem so bad.
While GAME’s brand still exists, it has largely been reduced nationwide to a concession area within other Frasers Group stores – typically in Sports Direct.
The changes have meant the loss of hundreds of dedicated GAME staff, a continued shift towards GAME’s focus of selling toys, and a loss of all the chain’s previous customer programmes.
As Eurogamer previously reported, you won’t be able to pre-order a Switch 2 in-store at GAME. Indeed, Eurogamer has been told by GAME staff that in-store pre-orders will now no longer offered for any item, despite outdated messaging on the company’s website saying otherwise.
Last year, Eurogamer reported on GAME’s various ongoing issues as it is further integrated into Sports Direct’s Fraser Group, and suffers store closures, redundancies, and stock problems.