Staff members were told of GAME’s impending change to force staff onto zero hours contracts, first reported yesterday by Eurogamer, via mass video calls held on Microsoft Teams.
The company’s various Area Managers - exempt from the change - held the calls yesterday, with local employees instructed to join. Multiple staff in the calls have told Eurogamer the meetings were brief, with the Area Managers reading from a script, and no oppurtunity given to ask questions.
At the end of the call, staff were told they would either be stepping down to the “Cast Member” zero hours contract or made redundant, following a meeting with their “Cluster Manager” - the firm’s next management level down from Area Manager.
Never heard of GAME before because I’m in North America but what an absolutely shitty thing to do.
Never heard of it either and I’m in Europe. Apparently it’s a company thrown around by random corporatists that have little to do with gaming. Whatever connection there is seems to be about gaming the stock market so, while shitty, it is expected because the owners are shitty.
Game used to huge here in the UK but have followed the same decline path as gamestop in the us. To the point I used to think they were the same company.
A couple yrs ago they were reduced to a corner of sports direct shop floorvwith most if not all of the stores shut.
This is not a supprise if I’m honest especially after they announced they were getting out of the pre owned market
GAME is owned by Frasers Group, chaired by Mike Ashlee who is probably the most sinister, self-indulgent asshole you’ve never heard of. This is all very, very on-brand for him. I worked for his company’s head office for a month and that was enough to make me realise I couldn’t stand him or his practices.
I worked in the UK spinoff of Electronics Boutique, which was part of the GAME group, back in the PS2 era. All of front line staff were very passionate about gaming and I made a lot of good friends that I’m touch with to this day, and working there with like minded people was actually a lot of fun.
Meanwhile the managers, regional managers, and corporate as a whole only seemed to care about how three things: pre-orders, pre-owned, and loyalty cards (at £2 a pop), and they were very heavy handed in making sure we pushed those as hard as possible.
It’s been a slow decline but it never felt the same since they bought Gamestation, their only real competitor, and rebranded all stores to GAME. I feel bad for the people affected and hope they manage to get off that sinking ship and into something better.
