The oft-mentioned “economic downturn” (which has been turning downwards for so long surely it’s completely upside down by now) has had wide-ranging effects — or, at the very least, things have happened which people feel can be attributed to said economic downturn. A lack of jobs meaning highly qualified people are forced to sit at home in their pants watching The Jeremy Kyle Show. Currency devaluation and something about inflation, which I shan’t pretend to understand even a little bit. And, of course, the demise of the High Street.

To be fair, online shopping has been providing a compelling reason not to go and shop on the High Street for a number of years now, but as the news channels attempt to sex up incredibly boring financial stories with words like “CRISIS” and various incomprehensible graphs plummet inexorably downwards, the demise of in-person shopping could very much become a reality.

The latest casualty of various financial implications is the Game Group, who run both Game and Gamestation, the two main video game retailers here in the UK. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, major publishers and suppliers have pulled out of their deals with the two chains, preorders for big hits like Mass Effect 3 and the like are not being honoured, the company’s share price has plummeted to something obscenely low and it’s looking increasingly likely that the whole thing will go into administration, potentially leaving around 6,000 people out of a job. Which would suck.

For any Americans reading, Game is essentially our equivalent of GameStop. And while it’s prone to many of the same problems GameStop has in the U.S. — inflated prices for preowned games, being bugged to preorder, a not-terribly-generous reward card scheme — it’s been a fixture on the British high street for many years now, and the go-to destination for people to get the latest releases. Gamestation, meanwhile, was formerly the second-biggest game store chain, with a somewhat more grungey feel inside its various shops. It used to carry proper retro stuff — we’re talking right back to Super NES and the like here — though that side of things has dried up a little in recent years, though you can still find the odd rarity. Game acquired Gamestation back in 2007, but kept the separate brand as a distinct shopping experience.

Both carried a wide variety of new games, preowned titles and gaming-related crap like Pokemon toys and Sackboy plushies. Until recently, they always seemed to be doing a roaring trade any time I paid them a visit — this perhaps partly being due to the fact that they were pretty much the only recognisable video game specialist retailers in the UK (barring second hand-only stores like Pink Planet and CEX).

Now, though, it’s an altogether different story. The carefully-crafted music playlist playing through the store’s speakers has been replaced by whatever the employees want to listen to (the other day, I heard some awesome metal versions of Nintendo themes, which made me wonder why on Earth they didn’t do that more often); the employees seem a little downcast, particularly when people come in asking about (occasionally ill-informed) stories they’d read on the Internet; and the shelves are noticeably empty of the week’s big releases. Every new day, it seems, sees a new publisher reporting that its latest titles will not be available on Game Group shelves — in just the last week or so, I’ve seen reports of EA, Capcom and Tecmo Koei pulling out before everything goes really tits up.

It’s sad to see a once-proud retailer in what is clearly its death throes, and it’s doubly sad when you think of the thousands of people nationwide who will likely be out of a job when the shit hits the fan. But as a consumer, it’s worth noting that now is a great time to go and pay a Game or Gamestation a visit, because the stores are desperately trying to get rid of the masses of preowned games cluttering up their shelves. And you probably already know what that means — ludicrous savings.

In the last week, for the price of two brand new console games I’ve managed to acquire 17 games across several different platforms, many of which I’ve been meaning to try out for quite some time but couldn’t really justify dropping £40 on. That’s a pretty frickin’ awesome deal, and while none of that money I spent makes it back to the publishers and developers of the titles in question thanks to the fact they’re all preowned, frankly I don’t really care at this point. I’ve long been a supporter of the used games market — over the years, it’s been the source of some of my most beloved and rarest titles, which, in many cases, I’ve come to long after the game is out of print anyway.

But I digress. It’s looking very much like Game is not long for this world, and once it’s gone there will be very few places you’ll be able to physically walk into to buy a new video game. What will take the place of these stores on the High Street?

Clothes shops, no doubt. One sector that remains resolutely safe from the “threat” of digital distribution.