Best Buy's Gamers Club Unlocked Might Soon Be A Thing Of The Past
In the Amazon age, Best Buy has made a lot of changes and launched a lot of initiatives to keep pace. One of its most successful initiatives is unquestionably Gamers Club Unlocked, a subscription service that offers big discounts on new games for any platform. As it turns out, Gamers Club Unlocked may have been too good to last.
As leaked by video game deal hunter Wario64, Best Buy has apparently sent a memo out to employees that says Gamers Club is effectively dead. "For a variety of reasons, we have decided that our Gamers Club programs will not be accepting new members," the memo reads. "This includes both the free Gamers Club membership and Gamers Club Unlocked (GCU)."
The memo goes on to say that current members will continue to receive their benefits until their subscription period runs out, but won't be able to renew once it ends. For everyone else, the memo encourages employees to offer My Best Buy memberships and its associated perks. Best Buy's point-of-sale systems stopped surfacing Gamers Club subscriptions at checkout on the same day this memo went out, and it even instructs employees to take down associated signage immediately, so it looks like Best Buy wanted to remove mention of Gamers Club quickly.
When you consider the cost of Gamers Club Unlocked and what kind of perks it gave subscribers, it isn't all that surprising to see it going away. GCU only cost $29.99 for a two-year subscription, and its main draw was a 20% discount on any new video game, including pre-orders. It doesn't take very long to recoup the cost of a GCU membership, even for moderate or casual gamers, so it isn't hard to imagine Best Buy losing money on these subscriptions.
For now, it seems that My Best Buy will be the only replacement for Gamers Club, and it's unclear if something new will be launched in its place later on down the road. For that matter, there's been no official confirmation from Best Buy that Gamers Club is going the way of the dodo. We'll just have to wait and see what Best Buy's next move is, so stay tuned.