Redbox to end video game sales and rentals at the end of the month

By Taylor Lyles Published December 9, 2019

Redbox recently announced that it would be ceasing the sale and rentals of video games at the end of the year.

For years, Redbox’s rental kiosks served as an accessible and affordable option for people to rent movies and video games, and the company was one of the few to offer physical copies of games. The company told The Verge that it will be exiting the gaming rental business and will instead “focus exclusively on movies.”

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The news first broke out on Reddit when several users noticed that the Redbox rental kiosks would no longer offer users the option to rent video games, the company later confirmed on Twitter that game rentals are no longer available. This change in business strategy is a significant loss for gamers who relied on Redbox to play games without experiencing buyer’s remorse.

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While this is disappointing for gamers, there are still a few rental options available including mail services such as Family Video, iFlipd, GameFly. While some of these rental services such as Family Video offer a one-time purchase, rental services, most notably GameFly, require an active monthly subscription to rent games on its platform. Also, unlike Redbox, a lot of these rental services like GameFly are mailing services, meaning you will have to wait for the game to be shipped to your mailing address before you can play it.

While many of the kiosks have stopped offering games, there are still a select few kiosks that still provide games for purchase. As the company transitions out of the video game rental business, users can capitalize on several gaming deals before they disappear from Redbox. While speaking to The Verge, Redbox confirmed that some gaming deals that it will offer include Death Stranding and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, both of which will be on sale for $40 each. If you are interested in purchasing one of the pre-rented games, head to Redbox’s gaming section and click on the game you are interested in buying and enter your zip code to find a Redbox kiosk near you that still has the game in stock.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Based out of Baltimore, Maryland, Taylor is a contributing writer for Digital Trends covering the latest news in the computer…

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