Jobs lost as high street giant in administration with £16m debts

Game, the once‑dominant high street video‑games chain which had over 300 UK stores, continues to disappear from city and town centres across the UK.

An administration report shows the business owed roughly £3.5m to its secured creditor and about £12m to unsecured creditors, many of whom are not expected to recover what they are owed.

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The retailer, now owned by Frasers Group, has been through insolvency once before in 2012 but had rebuilt around a mix of smaller shop units and in‑store concessions inside Sports Direct and House of Fraser.

Those concessions now represent Game’s main physical footprint in Oxfordshire with a branch housed in Cowley’s Sports Direct at Oxford Retail Park on Ambassador Avenue.

That means customers in and around Oxford can still buy products over the counter in Cowley, even as the chain’s standalone stores close elsewhere.

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Witney, however, has already lost its dedicated Game branch after the store held a closing‑down sale in December 2023, before shutting in January 2024.

National coverage has since confirmed that Game’s remaining high street outlets in other parts of the country will shut during 2026.

This ends more than three decades as a standalone presence and leaves the brand trading online and through concessions only.

This pattern is already evident in Oxfordshire, where the Witney shop has gone, and the Cowley counter inside Sports Direct survives.