FIFTEEN jobs have been axed in Bournemouth after the retailer which owns the Game and Gamestation chains went into administration.

Eight jobs will also be lost at both Dorchester and Weymouth.

The shock redundancies were announced last night.

In total, 2074 jobs will be lost across the country.

The Game Group has four branches of Game in the Bournemouth and Poole area and two of Gamestation, each employing up to 10 people.

PwC, which announced the redundancies, has been appointed administrator to the UK business, which has 609 shops nationally and employs almost 6,000 people.

Some suppliers had stopped providing the chain with new stock and it had a £21million rent bill that was due.

Dr Mike Molesworth, a senior lecturer in consumer behaviour and online marketing at Bournemouth University, said one of the main reasons for the company’s plight was that people could now download their games directly via cloud technology.

“Game, like any retailer really, is a middle man and they add value by their role as a middle man between the games publisher and the platforms and the consumer,” he said.

“What people have found is that the value that Game used to justify its margin has been harder and harder to see.”

He said the sales of new games had also been squeezed by the supermarkets, while its trade in second-hand games had been eaten away by the likes of Amazon Marketplace and eBay.

The lack of a new generation of game consoles had meant people had less reason to go to a games shop.

Dr Molesworth pointed out that many shopping centres, including Bournemouth and Poole town centres, had Game and Gamestation branches close together.

“It’s a depressing picture for the high street because you start to wonder about the retailers who will take these spaces,” he said.

“If your expertise is in retail, you must be wondering where these other new shop jobs are.”

Mike Jervis, joint administrator and partner at PwC, said the group had faced “serious cash flow and profit issues”.