David Howard takes the GAME reins as UK MD

UK retail and event outfit GAME has shuffled its senior management team, with several senior departures as David Howard moves from UK retail and property director to the role of UK managing director.

This news comes from GamesIndustry.Biz, who dug into the story. Howard will now oversee all commercial and marketing teams as part of his new role. GI report that this means Natalie Amosu, the firm’s chief marketing officer who joined GAME last August, and David Rimmer, the commercial director for the business who joined the firm in 2015 and took up the commercial director role in December 2016, have departed the company.

This could be part of GAME’s changing business. The company is weathering lower physical sales – the UK market is down 6.9% in 2018 in terms of unit sales, while revenue is down 5.3% according to UKIE and GFK figures– while also trying to transition to running more events and opening more Belong arenas for punters to come and game in a physical space.

It’s a challenging time for the company, as it is with many retail stores, and it’s a year that has already claimed small retailers Grainger Games and Games Centre over the last six months. GAME itself is no stranger to brushes with bankruptcy, and so it appears the business is trying to shift to better fit what customers actually want from a physical space for video games in 2018.