A ways back, I wrote about Best Buy. Like many other stores, it has gone pretty heavy into trend collectibles and other merchandise, including anime items. However, the real draw of Best Buy was Gamers Club Unlocked, a program where customers got 20% off video game purchases (and other offers) for two years for $30. A real bargain considering that takes most new console games down to $47.99 and handheld games to $31.99.
However, gamers got some bad news: the program is coming to an end.
The End of an Era
A leaked notice on May 18th alerted gamers across the Internet. Unfortunately, by the time most people read it, renewals had already been halted, although some people said they coincidentally had reupped their memberships earlier that same day. By the afternoon, however, even if someone had found one of the Gamers Club Unlocked cards, the actual item code had already been disabled.
Only thing I can contribute to the Best Buy GCU reports is that 'GCU is dead', the memo pictured below was sent out today to employees and is real, current GCU members will get benefits until membership expires but cannot be renewed.
RIP GCU pic.twitter.com/T2t2L93wlW
— Wario64 (@Wario64) May 18, 2018
Best Buy has confirmed that current members can continue receiving their discounts, but once their current membership has expired, that’s it.
Canadians had their version of Gamers Club ended in April. The Reward Zone program where all customers earned points for purchases also terminated that same day. This probably should have been a clue, but this change didn’t seem to make the rounds outside of Canadian sites. I didn’t find this out until the news about Gamers Club Unlocked broke.
So why is Best Buy suddenly ending this program? Newsweek and other outlets hypothesize that game publishers are rebelling against discounting new games. Particularly, while people are split on physical versions of media versus digital, there’s no doubt the companies themselves prefer digital. The only real cost is finding an online store. Yes, there’s a risk of digital copies being available on the Internet, but they would be leaked anyway. The buyers who do purchase digital copies cannot resell them, and the company doesn’t have to spend money on cases and stuff. Console and handheld games generally retail the same as physical versions, so a discounted version upon release is very tempting.
But while video game budgets have risen, the cost has been the same for about a decade. This old chart from 2010 breaks down the cost for games. If these numbers are still somewhat accurate, this means that Best Buy is essentially giving up all their profits on each new console game — and perhaps losing money.
For those players who have picked up titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, God of War, or the upcoming Kingdom Hearts III on release day, Best Buy is giving up a lot of money for no benefit.
That really isn’t too much of a surprise, but I thought Best Buy made up for it in volume. GameStop almost never does anything outside of exclusive DLC or other preorder bonuses, Target at best might have offered a $5 gift card, but other than that, no other store could come close. I know I’m not the only one who basically moved all my game purchases to Best Buy because of this program, and plus I could earn $5 certificates when I spent enough money. Even better, some preorders also came with $10 back in rewards. While perhaps this made the program too much of a good deal, Gamers Club Unlocked has been around since 2013, so this isn’t a brand new experiment.
Of course, back when it first came out, it was $120 — four times its later price. It was also sold for $60 for a while.
Over the years, Best Buy has put some limitations on the program. Members could only buy three identical copies of a game at a discount; later, Black Friday weekend was excluded from the 20% off.
Amazon obviously felt threatened enough by the program to start offering a similar deal for Prime members. When it was first announced, Amazon offered 20% off preorders and new releases within two weeks. Amazon ended up putting much stricter restrictions: no collector’s editions or limited editions, and only preorders got the 20% off. Inferior to Gamers Club Unlocked, but it didn’t cost Prime members any extra money. I and others expect Amazon to soon end this offering since they no longer need to compete with Gamers Club Unlocked.
Future Impacts
But what about the future of Best Buy? Lots of customers are claiming they’ll stop shopping there once their membership runs out.
There’s also concern Best Buy will end memberships early. Like most companies, their terms and conditions say they can modify and cancel the program at any time. This may not be great PR, but it’s within their rights. I’ve heard reports some people loaded up on memberships as far out as 2028. I doubt Best Buy is going to want to keep their computers systems set up to discount games for some people for 10 years. Even if it’s easy to do, that’s 10 years’ worth of games they could be losing $8 or more on. I think they’d rather refund people $1.25 a month ($30 for two years divided by 24 months) for each year of their membership beyond 2020 or so. Even if they bumped it up to, say, $2, that $24 a year is equal to giving up the discount on two console games. If that person was going to buy three console games in the calendar year, Best Buy would be coming out ahead. Plus, they’d most likely issue a refund in Reward Zone dollars, which means consumers would still have to come back to Best Buy to spend them.
Of course, once Gamers Club Unlocked has officially ended, the question is whether Best Buy will be launching a replacement. Fans of the program have suggested raising the price back up to $120. I would have thought this would have been Best Buy’s first move before terminating renewals. Less people would subscribe, of course, but this also means less games to sell at a discount.
Other ideas include dropping the discount to 10%, applying discounts only to standard editions, or limiting it to preorders.
People who have never subscribed or let their memberships drop have said that physical games are going the way of the dodo. For instance, Sony isn’t allowing any more Vita cartridges in the West in 2019. Yes, the Vita never gained major traction in the West compared to Japan — let alone the Nintendo 3DS — but it’s still a loss for those of us who like our physical media.
Also, will My Best Buy points — the replacement for the old Reward Zone program — be ending like Reward Zone? Or is Canada just switching to My Best Buy like the US stores? It will be interesting, as the points might have pushed some buyers over the edge versus buying at Amazon. Their current offer of potentially saving $1 for store pickup instead of delivery isn’t going to be enough to get gamers to always choose Best Buy.
Final Thoughts
So, while this is incredibly disappointing, it shouldn’t be too surprising. Publishers are trying to wean more and more gamers to the digital versions, preventing GameStop and other trade-in places from gaining all the profits on used games. I didn’t pick up a major appliance or electronic because of my Gamers Club Unlocked membership, but I did several some games I wouldn’t have otherwise. Heck, I bought both the Vita and PS4 versions of Code: Realize‘s sequel because of the discount.
I probably won’t stop shopping at Best Buy once my membership ends, but it will no longer be my main outlet. I’ll buy wherever is cheapest, and I probably won’t be preordering as many games. That $12 off makes a big difference when your backlog is as huge as mine, and getting limited editions discounted often made the special versions cheaper than the regular versions anywhere else. Of course, Best Buy and the game publishers weren’t happy, and since memberships are going to taper off, they probably won’t see a significant blowback.