WSJ: GameCrazy officially shuttered in US alongside Hollywood Video

by Ben Gilbert on May 3rd 2010 3:30PM

GameCrazy's parent company Movie Gallery Inc. is said to be shuttering the approximately 250 remaining GC stores across the United States, alongside 2,165 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video outlets. Roughly 19,000 people are estimated to be out of work due to the closures, according to a Wall Street Journal report, and the company is said to be filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

People "familiar with the matter" told the WSJ that the chain considered "reorganizing around smaller core stores" before filing for bankruptcy, but the idea "never got any traction." It also appears that the 184 or so Canadian outlets will remain unaffected, but we've heard nothing official yet. Reportedly, the US stores will begin liquidation "over the next couple of months" until inventories run dry, mirroring the murmurs we heard this past weekend.

While the reality that GameCrazy is suffering this fate certainly appears likely (our tips box seems to corroborate the information), we should note that Movie Gallery Inc. has yet to issue any formal statement regarding the allegations. Our calls to GameCrazy corporate have similarly gone unanswered. If you are a GameCrazy, Hollywood Video, or Movie Gallery employee with any form of official documentation on this subject, we'd love to hear from you.

[Via GameSpot]

Source

Tags: bankruptcy, chapter-7, gamecrazy, hollywood-video, layoffs, movie-gallery, wall-street-journal

Reader Comments (47)

It's a shame that I haven't been to this shop. I heard a lot of good things about it.

...I hate not living in the States..

What? From who? I've only ever heard absolutely terrible things about the GameCrazy in my area. It always sounded like shopping out of the back of a black SUV in a parking lot at 2am would be less shady.

Why? Blame lack of customers. If people were not shopping there it must mean something is up with how management handle the competition.

Well I lost my VIP card at Coachella. Doesn't look like I'll ever be needing it again.

:(

So Coachella is pretty much the high point of your existence, I'm guessing.

Being at Coachella is more awesome than having a VIP card

It's definitely one of the things I look forward to every year. No matter how you look at it....it's mind blowing.

Hmm did you go to Coachella? I don't know what that is but the fact that you mentioned it twice gives me douche chills

I went to Coachella this year too. Yes, its a high point of my year in a couple ways...

Awesome, Kid Icarus!

Best performance imo - Fever Ray
Best surprise - Vampire Weekend

Yours?

could someone tell me what "douche chills" are supposed to be

Levi: Go watch Arrested Development. That is all.

^

I just blue myself.

Man, sad to see two more stores axed.

Although I've never been (but have heard of) to Game Crazy, I remember that back when I was living in LA, my cousins and I used to go rent movies in a nearby Hollywood Video because the clerk was a school buddy of one of them, so they got half-off for the movies they got.

My condolences to the unemployees of those stores. May they find another job quickly so they get back on track with their lives...

I remember Hollywood video used to rent games out too. I still have Power Rangers for the Genesis that I never returned...

I still have disk one for Tales of Symphonia...

I still have Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit for the psx. Maybe us not returning the games is the cause of their demise?

I knew the hollywood video was dead, all their stores were liquidated in my area a few years ago.

Still there's a game crazy or two in north chicago, i will have to venture over and see what I can get.

Where at? I live in the northwest burbs and our Game Crazy store closed about 3 years ago.

I'm pretty sure their clearance deals still won't beat the resale shops around here, though.

not sure, i just looked at it through google maps to make sure it is not an old listing. they had a hollywood video right next to it too, haha...

Wooohooo
long live Gamestop
>.>

Gamefly*

Touché. I have a subscription actually.

nice just picked up a new copy of Beatles Rock Band for my 360 for 14 bucks at the store near me :)

That's a sham, Hollywood would carry titles Blockbuster doesn't. Like Really cool old crappy B movies.

Time to invest in Netflix my man.

Not since they started screwing people for the "Opportuniy" To rent blurays once every blue moon.

Plus they take forever to get to italy.

And the streaming no longer works here.

I blame the economy. No money = no purchase

I dunno if overpricing was the problem. Gamestop seems to be doing fine with charging $55 for a used game...

I blame that awfully ignorant woman from the Gamecrazy Training Video.

http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/03/18/tse-riff-theater-gamecrazy-training-video/#comments

I used to work at a hollywood video, i think i was about 7 years ago, it was the only DVD exclusive store. Its amazing that a company that was seemingly doing so well at the time, could fall so hard. next up: blockbuster.

Thank you netflix, those companies were horrible, they road the gravy train long enough.

If I still worked there, I would get you the documentation. But I can say that Hollywood Video and Game Crazy are indeed closing. My former coworkers are very bummed about the situation, although the writing has been on the wall for months.

The sad thing is that most of the Game Crazy stores make money, but because they're connected to the failing rental service, Hollywood Video, they have to close too.

Sucks.

I'm looking forward to driving to all of the Game Crazy stores within a 20 mile radius only to find all of the good games at the inevitable awesome sales will be gone in negative ten seconds.

That's pretty much what it was like during the Hollywood Video $5 game sale. The local resellers are like vultures around here.

There's no inevitable awesome sales. The Game Crazy near me just closed down. They had a 20% off special, BUT all the new releases/hot games were pulled down and gone (I was in the night before, and then saw the store closing signs on the way to school the next morning so stopped in). Now it was all 1 to 2 year old stuff on the wall behind the counter with their original prices (now 20% off). Why pay $40 for something I can get for $10 at the resellers? All the good/newer used games were gone too. Maybe someone came in and bought them but with the new games wall refilled with really old junk I'd say anything good was mailed back to the company for online sales and they cleaned out the warehouse to stock the shelves with old junk they couldn't get rid of, hoping people would buy it thinking they are getting an awesome store closing deal.

sucks. But I probably wouldn't have bothered this time. I'm not kidding about the resellers being vultures around here. There's two stores that buy everything on Craigslist (and there aren't even any good deals on Craigslist here, which tells you about the resellers' prices) and a third that has "garage sale teams." Garage sale..ing is something that the GF and I enjoy because she gets to look at crap and I get to search for NES and SNES games. But since I heard that, it kinda raped half of the fun out of it.

Did I hear right that Gamecrazy stocked old games too? Like NES and SNES?

I picked up a copy of Grandia II for the Dreamcast in about 2005? 2004?

Was used, and the dude was surprised as hell that he had a copy. But yes, they did stock older games. That being said, shopping there was very unpleasent. The manager of the store near me tried to sell me the HD DVD attachment for the 360, promising me that I would need it to play Halo 3 when it came out.

I feel sorry for the people losing their jobs, but I am not sad to see this company go away.

@Latin_Trident

If you blamed the economy then Gamestop would be in the same boat.

This sucks cause Game Crazy was the pinicle of my childhood. I'd go there almost every week and the guy knew me by name. But that one closed a long time ago.

Game Crazy>Game Stop.

Awesome, Kid Icarus!

Best performance imo - Fever Ray
Best surprise - Vampire Weekend
Yours?

I worked at Movie Gallery/Gamezone until this past February. Still great friends with everyone there and I work next door to it now. As far as I know, they have only been notified through the phone with their District Managers. No actual paperwork per se has been given to the stores regarding it, but the store managers and employees of course know. I'll keep checking and see if they get a memo any time soon.

well the ones I worked at told us we weren't closing and then a week later called me and told me to start putting things in boxes and lock the doors....the upper management knows they just don't wanna tell.

As a current employee as one of the few Gamecrazy stores still open, I can say that noone was surprised by this announcement. If you have ever worked for this company you knew from the beginning that they were going to go under.

They opened way too many stores (the city I live in is nowhere near a large city yet there were 2 Gamecrazy/Hollywood Videos built within a 10 minute drive of each other), never took into serious account the effect that services like Gamefly and Netflix would have. You cannot sustain a profitable business in a slumping economy by building more stores. They are the same as Gamestop when it comes to screwing people on hours for the sake of trying to stay afloat and not having to pay benefits to their employees. I was once told by my DM that if I wanted 40 hours a week I'd have to become a shift leader at another location.

Anyone who spent any semblance of time working for this company knew it was a sinking ship. Horrid management from the top down and various other stupid decisions and policies doomed it.

my heart goes out to the people losing their jobs due to store closures.
i've been there, and it absolutely sucks.

I managed a Game Crazy for several years. They did good business. Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery however, did not. It's a shame that Game Crazy is getting dragged down with them. I wonder why they didn't sell it off first...

I hated Hollywood video. They came to town, bought up a few popular independent places, raised the prices then went out of business. Thanks guys.

Also, Game Crazy was the worst. They never called when your preorder arrived (GameStop does), the stores were always a mess, they hired nothing but d-bag film students and guys who thought they were Ryan Reynolds in Waiting (more often than not they were just low rent versions of Comic Book Guy), I was frequently recommended games that I knew to be bad (i.e. Dynasty Warriors and Narc) and they were all fanboys of some sort (i.e. people who said "the Gamecube controller was the best in gaming", "I still play my VirtualBoy", "if it's not a PlayStation, why do you have it?","Actually, the first XBox controller was perfect", etc.).

GameStop is only marginally better, but video game stores themselves have driven me to buy online as much as possible.

oh man. i used to work at Gamecrazy back in 2003 - 2005! I missed that place. Nothing better than getting a 20% employee discount on used games and getting unlimited free rentals from Hollywood Video!

I worked for Hollywood Video for about 3 years. The first one closed after initial bankruptcy and I was transferred to another one, that closed down about a year and a half later, and that was one of the most profitable stores in the state. My old manager told me she is working on other Hollywood's and Movie Gallery's that are closing, so you guys can pretty much assume that they will be closing all Game Crazy's. Canada ones I can't speak for but if it's anything like the company has done in the past you can expect for them close all GC stores.

I've never even seen one of these freaking places. I suppose the up-side is that there's one less store-exclusive DLC to have to trade for. Took me forever to get that Forgotten Warrior Skin for GoWIII.

WSJ: GameCrazy officially shuttered in US alongside Hollywood Video

Reader Comments (47)

Posted: May 3rd 2010 3:32PM Ahmedz said

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