If many of us ask about a referral store in the video game industry, the general answer will be GAME. Speaking of physical stores, of course. Those of us with gray hair may fail even our memory and end up referring to it as Centro Mail (universe sponsored by nostalgia…). With both street-level stores and mall stores, this veteran house has been a purveyor of games, consoles and more for generations.

The current GAME has very little in common, yes, with the Spanish chain, right It was born as a game rental service in the days of Spectra under the name OneWay Softwareand that was shortly after they started selling games by mail, thus starting the seed of Centro Mail. Today, it is part of a multinational group that has had to adapt to the spectacular development that the video game sector has experienced in about forty years. .

I have many memories of shopping at the chain, both when it was still Centro Mail (I still remember the happiness of walking out of Centro Mail del BurgoCentro de Las Rozas with the original Tomb Raider trilogy and Lara Croft ), like when they became GAME (where a good friend of mine worked at the time, who got me a sensational discount on my first generation Xbox). And I think this introduction is important because I want to make it clear I’m talking about a brand that inspires love and nostalgia in equal measure..

Image of the old post office of the shopping center La Vaguada (Madrid). Picture from Thursday the 13th

In the last hours, GAME was involved in a controversy that set the networks on fire, and the truth is, he’s given more than enough reasons to be in the public eye, both for his actions and his response to (deserved) user criticism. Because, let’s be clear, there can be a mistake or a decision to change, which is not acceptable, is trying to change the rules of the game, and on top of that, trying to make the other side think that things have always been the same, were a certain way when It is not true.

GAME, like many other retailers, has a customer loyalty programand one of the most notable aspects is that it has a points program. Yes, you know, every purchase you make translates into a certain number of points that are added to your account. Some points have a conversion rate to euros that you can later use when shopping in their stores and on the website. A regular points program, which is something that many buyers appreciate very positively, but with the uniqueness that we see now.

But what happened after that? Well, from the program’s launch (many years ago) to now, points have not expired. This means that if you bought Halo 3 on the day it was released in 2007 and used your loyalty card, your points have traveled with you through time and into the present, even though more than 15 years have passed.

It should be noted that this is not common, which is why I talked about the uniqueness of GAME, because it is common for points earned through this type of loyalty program to have an expiration date. Be it one, two, three or even more years, but not “forever”. AND The first part of the problem is that GAME decided to end this singularity.

Maintaining a non-expiring points program seems difficult in the current market conditions, so first of all I understand that Those responsible for GAME have decided that points earned for purchases will have an expiration date. Obviously this is not the best thing for the client, but again, it seems understandable to me. The bad thing, the other part of the problem, is that change in this sense has been remarkably mismanaged.

The first error in the way GAME started implementing this change in the terms of his points program is that she didn’t consider keeping those collected so far without expiration (or at least giving them a particularly long one of several years). Instead, with the change to the point management model, the new policy was applied retroactively to those previously earned.

You’re probably already imagining what the second problem is, which stems from the first. Indeed, overnight Many users have found that a significant portion of the points balance they have accumulated over time has expired. Put yourself in the situation, imagine that you have been collecting points from purchases for several years in order to get a good discount on the purchase of a console for example, and suddenly a large part of those points disappears.

And why did it happen? Why were users surprised to find they had lost their points? Let’s move on to the third problem, which is this one GAME subsequently informed the affected users, that is, after removing your points. Of course, this prevented customers from spending them when they were notified that they were running low, but it logically angered those affected down the road.

At this point, we already have management that could clearly be improved, but that GAME could have tried to straighten out by reformulating the terms of their points program and of course restoring those lost by users as a result. But they chose the opposite, they try to justify that point expiration is something that has always been there in the terms of its loyalty program, something in which its Twitter account plays a key role.

An example of this can be found by checking the conversation in which the user Orion Belt is posting message indicating that GAME has changed the terms listed on their website and attaching a screenshot of them to which the chain’s official account responds that these terms they were always there, on the Terms of Sale page. The problem is, all you have to do is take a quick look at the Internet Archive (here you can see a snapshot dated February 14, 2024) to verify this What the official GAME account claims is completely false.

But things go even further, because if we go back a little further in time, again thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, we find that The company itself also focused on ensuring that points do not expire. In this image from April 19, 2021, we can read the following:

«Your points never expire, so you can collect as many as you want without worrying about running out.»

We have to go to the next one, June 6 of the same year, to find the moment when the change was introduced. However, in both cases we are talking about the frequently asked questions (FAQ) page, not the terms of sale page, which has been modified in recent weeks.

So, yes, it’s true that GAME changed the point information in the FAQ on their website between April and June 2021but it still is The official Twitter account continued in late 2023that the points did not have an expiration date, as shown by Twitter user Santo in this messagewhich is the response many users have seen just three days before the points expire.

So when Even those responsible for brand communication were not aware of this change in terms. points program (despite the fact that it happened a year and a half earlier), what can we think about the communication (or rather the lack of it) with its customers? A measure like this, which substantially modifies the terms and conditions and ignorance of which can translate (and in this case did) into harming customers, needs to be communicated much, much more actively.

GAME still has time to come back, reverse the loss of points that surprised many of its clients, and fundamentally adopt a much clearer communication policy in this regard. On the other hand, we will have to wait to see if the user organizations clarify whether this procedure is in accordance with the law. We have contacted FACUA in this regard and are awaiting their response, which we will add to this article as soon as it is available.

In any case, experts in the field claim that acquiring a new client costs five times more than keeping an existing one (in some cases they are talking about ten times more), but what comes out incredibly cheap (short-term, of course), loses the existing ones. Now, in a market facing as many challenges as physical video game retail, it aims to become a case study in business schools. Under the heading “NO”.

Opening image: Miramar Shopping Center