The situation at Game, pt 2

Well, it's been a week since I first wrote about the situation at Game and a lot has happened since then, pretty much none of it good news.

I wrote in the original post that the second part of the post would be an opinion on the situation and what Game could do to resolve it but with things again moving so quick I've decided to postpone that and just go through what has been happening in the past week.

It wasn't a great start to the week for Game when it was announced that Rothschild had been brought in to find a buyer for the troubled company, a troubled company where shares had fell to below 1p a share to 0.85p. Things only got worse on Tuesday when it was announced that not one, not two but three games would not be stocked by the company. Ninja Gaiden 3, Warriors Orochi 3 and most crucially Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City were the games not to be stocked.

Wednesday was another kick in the teeth when it was announced that Sega were going to be transferring the Game exclusive DLC for Yakuza: Dead Souls to other shops and Nintendo announced that Kid Icarus: Uprising would not be stocked. There was supposed to be some good news though with report that OpCapita (owners of Comet) had reportedly made an offer for the company.

There was controversy late in the week when MCV sent out the latest edition of their magazine with the front page consisting of the headline 'Gone, time runs out for the UK's super-specialist', reportedly resulting in a lot of hate mail towards MCV. At the same time store closure letters were sent out to customers announcing closing dates, though it must be noted that this was already in the works before the crisis hit. Also it was announced lenders of Game had rejected the offer from OpCapita, resulting in the company being pushed back towards administration.

Finally, it was reported just today that Game needs to find £180m within the next week to pay off creditors or face administration. According to the report the retailer needs to find £21 million in rent, £12 million in wages, £1o million in deferred VAT and £40 million to game suppliers.

All in all it's been an absolutely terrible week for the retailer and unless something happens really quickly in the next week to turn things around it really is not looking good for the company.