Random: Family Video Closes Its Doors After 42 Years

I'm an American, but I've never heard of this store before in my life. Oh well.

RIP in peace.

This is incredibly sad. Decades of hard work just gone. Good luck to the owners and employees.

@Not_Soos Rest in Peace in peace.

Sad times, but knew it was coming. Even without Covid, this was bound to happen due to streaming platforms.

Hell I still fondly remember when my local IGA (grocery store) carried and rented out NES/SNES games and movies. Simpler times for sure.

@Not_Soos Same here. I’ve never heard of this chain, but you have to give them credit where credit is due as a business: 42 years swimming with their heads above water with ever-changing technology (every few years!) to adapt their capital model.

Bravo guys!

It's sad to hear this because somehow, they survived the rise of Netflix and other streaming services, Movies being sold on demand digitally, and even the fall of two rivals that were larger then them.

What takes Family Video down in the end? Covid, which has done more damage to retail and businesses then Amazon and Wal-Mart combined.

Went to one last February in while I was on a trip Munci, Indiana.

It's one of those few stores I could find that had games from the last century. Had this nice video-rental vibe to it too.

We have a rather extensive video rental store in town that I'm hoping survives the pandemic. Our small town somehow sustains two of them though

For those wondering, Family Video had most of their stores in the Midwest. My small town in Indiana had two, for instance. Really big in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, etc.

One thing that helped Family Video last as long as they did is that most of their stores owned the land they were on as opposed to renting lots and buildings like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. That, and they also rented adult movies, which accounted for up to 40% of their profit margin according to one of my friends who was a store manager for years there (even with the internet, haha).

Loved family video. Was always the less expensive option compared to blockbuster. Many ps1/2 n64 and gamecube games were rented back in the day. I guess I better go check one out if they're selling off their games, so that's a bright side on this sad day.

I worked at Family Video for 6 years, including while I was in college. I made a lot of friends in my time there, both with coworkers and with customers who rented games I enjoyed or was curious about. One of the best parts of that job was getting to recommend games to people, especially when they ended up loving them. RIP Fam Vid!

The Family Video in the town I live near closed recently; I knew that video rental stores were struggling before now, but I had no idea the whole chain was going under. Another unfortunate casualty of these crazy times.

I was starting to think the one here in Columbus Ohio was a front for something illegal as I was trying to figure out how they managed to keep staying around. Always appreciated their retro signage.

Awww. That tweet referencing Lunar: Silver Star Story hit me right in the feels! RIP Family Video.

@HotGoomba___Rebrand Yeah, that was a deliberate typo used ironically to express my apathetic disposition toward the store's closure. Don't be dismayed, however, as my sense of humor transcends human understanding.

@Not_Soos @Magrane They’re more of a midwest chain, so if you guys aren’t from around this area you’re likely to not have heard of them. I’m in Ohio and there’s a pretty good amount of them here.

Wow! 250 stores?? I’m 54 and gaming since I’m 12 and never heard of them. Perhaps they were west coast only?? Regardless a complete shame to see this happen! Another blow to the retail video game’s very existence. I wish them well.

@SimplyCinnamon53 Huh, I'm from Kentucky, which is geographically pretty close. Granted, I'm in the middle of scenic nowhere, so it's entirely possible they existed in larger cities in my state.

Back when Club Nintendo was a thing, Family Video was my ticket to getting tons of points and free stuff.

Sad to see Family Video go. I've only heard of them, but I always find it sad when a business goes out of business. 😞
I wonder how long it will be before other stores/chains that are struggling go out of business (Like Sears, AMC Theaters, etc.). 😞

I cant believe one of these is actually in my town, I'll have to go visit it before its gone

@joey302 Nope, Family Video is primarily a Midwestern chain. For reference, I'm in IL.

I do understand your "Huh, haven't heard of them" however. I'd never heard of some chains others take for granted until a few years ago. Places like Jack In The Box, Five Guys, and Trader Joe's all spring to my mind.

R.I.P they will be missed.

@backup368 So true! Safest place now.

I remember when first moving to Wuhan for work in 2013, none of my friends and family had ever heard of the place, and now everybody knows Wuhan!

RIP, always sad to see a gaming shop close.

Crazy to see a story about this on Nintendolife. It’s mostly a US Midwest thing. I worked there for 3 years actually starting in 2013. It’s crazy how even then there were people who thought video stores were all gone. People forget that at the beginning of this last decade, most people still didn’t have smart phones or stream any video. For context, back then we had almost 800 stores. Even for a small store, we were usually really busy, like 4 people on the clock on a weekend night. Honestly, it was more fun to me than the job I had bartending before. Also, Family Video was just such a nice, organized store with a well curated library. I stopped in tonight to grab up some sales and got Astral Chain for 20. I’d rather have the store back though. Heres to hoping that someone will find a new twist on the video store in the future.

I hope this doesn't mean Marco's Pizza is going kaput as well. They often occupied the same building.

@sketchturner haha , nice! Were you taking the codes out of the boxes on the shelf?

@RobotReptile As a former employee I can speak to that. The family that ranFamily Video would always buy the property the store was on outright. I think that’s why they just lasted longer. Their stores never had to cover rent, just utilities and payroll. Lots of people wondered how we stayed in business but it was really just responsible management.

As digital media has become more popular and with the pandemic hurting businesses it’s not too surprising but still a huge shame. I’ve rented games from the FV by my mom’s work (we live in Michigan), and I’m sad to see them go.

@FatMamaCass same here! I worked there 3 years. Crazy that this British site is reporting on it haha. It’s hard to describe to people, but it really was an energetic and fun place to work... except for the inventories and tickler stuff...

@HeyItsFlapjack you’re right on the money. They always told us to say ‘we carry content for the ENTIRE family’. Had a few old dudes open personal accounts they asked to keep hidden from their wives.

It always amazes me they were still in business.

Few years ago they teamed up with Marcos pizza and sold it next door to them. They also started selling CBD oil according to their signs.

I just pirate movies so I haven’t been in one in at least 8 years.

I didn't rent a whole lot of games from Family Video, but I loved renting movies from there and remember alot of good times when I was a kid. It is a shame that mine closed.

My copy of Mutant League Hockey came from a Family Video.

I go to this strictly retro game store called play n trade in my area and I can tell it's on it's last legs. Retro gaming is such a niche market already, and covid on top of it practically means death. When I was in NY I also saw that J&L game wasn't doing all too well. I need to binge spend as much as I can there before they are inevitably gone next month or so

I'm pretty sure we had one in Colorado well over a decade ago went in there because the blockbuster and hollywood video closed and while skipping school we were surprised to see a rental store, it was like a dungeon in there, the employee was old and didn't say a word but glared at us the whole time, felt like everything was just covered in a layer of dust

Our local store closed last year. It is now a Dollar General.

@Tyranexx IL here as well, central, near Springfield.

As someone whose family had rented over $10k of stuff from them over the years this sucks. 2020 took one more thing before it was over. I hate it.

I'm "a gamer of a certain age". I went to our local store for years before it closed down during the 2008 financial crisis. I rented a lot of games and movies there and...

This was a long time overdue. I of course feel bad for the employees who are now out of work - but these stores have been obsolete for a very long time now. And I'm sorry but that's just the truth. I have no idea what their prices were in recent years, but as a kid and a teen it usually ended up that I could rent 3-4 movies for the like 5 days it was or I could just buy a movie and have it forever. It was a slightly better deal for games back in the SNES and N64 era. When games were smaller and simpler than today. It's a reasonable thing to rent a SNES platformer on a Friday and aim to beat it over the weekend. But even then you had games like Final Fantasy or Mario RPG and those certainly weren't realistically rentable, unless you were using the service like paid demos.

And sure they might have physical releases of some movies that streaming services don't have and there's that. But let's be real, if I wanted to watch an entire TV series, there's no way it's going to be even a comparison. Take a show like 2004's Battle Star Galactica. I binge watched that show on Netflix in 2 weeks a few years ago. If I had had to rent, even each season(assuming they had it and rented it that way), that pays for more than the cost of one month of Netflix.

Sorry if saying this comes off as cold, but pandemic or not, I seriously doubt Family Video had much time left anyway.

Oh, and their candy and snacks were highway robbery! I remember seeing 3 dollar candy bars back in like 2005. 3 dollars for a dang candy bar!

The damage to small businesses and smaller chain stores from this pandemic is going to be immense. So many cool little joints are having to close down.

Well, darn it! I guess I'll have to settle for Redbox and my local library for my future game and movie renting needs. I'll have to check out that liquidation sale, though...

Here in the UK, the first video rental store I had was Video Box Office. It was right outside my school so I'd visit every day waiting for the deals when you could rent a game for a whole week.

Mystical Ninja on the N64 was my first rent and I kept renting out Final Fantasy 7. I remember my Dad used to rent VHS' and burn them to DVDs!

They went into Administration, but the store was closed long before that.

@Dm9982 I don't know about that. There will always be a decent-sized segment of the population (myself included) who prefer one-time fees over subscriptions whenever possible. While streaming services have certainly cut significantly into their markets, you still don't see sales of CDs and DVDs/Blu-rays declining to endangered levels, do you? Renting should be no different, and its why Family Video has managed to last even this long, while Redbox continues to succeed.

@BulbasaurusRex Eh I don’t see physical stuff becoming endangered anytime soon, but eventually that will be the case. When it comes to media, whether we prefer it or not, it’s cheaper from a development and production standpoint to just stream/cloud all media. It sucks, but it’s where we’re heading to.

Not to mention, as long as a producer/developer keeps the media active on a cloud/stream platform, the media will last indefinitely. Whereas, eventually, a physical product will fail either due to wear and tear, or just general degradation.

My family and I loved renting from family Video, amongst other places through out our lives. It was basically a weekend ritual to rent a ton of movies and binge. And for the longest time FV was the only way to watch HBO/Starz shows without paying for a sub fee to those services.

So sad:

I have so many great memories about Family Video. Originally, our FV was the size of a small living room. A bunch of us would ride our bikes there after playing football at the local JFL field. You could either rent one NES game for a night for $2.50 (the recently released/biggest titles) or two games for seven nights for $1 (the hidden gems, older games). Family Video is the reason why my favorite NES games were not Mario 3 or Zelda, but instead Faxanadu, River City Ransom, Final Fantasy, Guerilla War, and so many others. I only owned about nine NES games, but I probably rented over 100. I remember when rented games still had the manual, and I was confused as to why FV got rid of them in exchange for the one page manual that was laminated to the plastic case (I found out, years later, that it had to do with copyright infringement).

I also remember renting an SNES, shortly after release. Instead of renting Mario World, I rented Home Alone and Final Fantasy II. At first, the SNES left me cold.....that is until I rented a game called Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past.

Thanks to Family Video, gaming during the 16 bit era was just as exciting. I was the only kid in the neighborhood with a Sega CD, and our Family Video had a small selection of games for it, so I didn’t have to beg my dad to take me to Blockbuster. It was common to go in, after school, and find my buddy Carson playing the SNES kiosk. We actually met there, over a friendly game of Mortal Kombat 2.

I’m going to miss that place. So many great memories were born there.

In the face of the disgustingly wealthy become far wealthier during this pandemic, the lack of, and actual resistance to, direct financial assistance to actual working and struggling families/people is beyond criminal. Kings have lost their heads for much less. Make no mistake, however - this is the result of the economic system working exactly as intended.

@Omarzy Thanks for making this observation--it's really disgusting and disappointing that this has happened.

While video game sales are up, I also find that free-to-play games and lending games has helped some neighbors and friends in coping with this.

There was someone I added to my ignore list here in the comments last year who claimed that people who can't afford video games shouldn't be given consoles or games as gifts, somehow forgetting that video rental stores like Family Video, Hollywood Video, and Blockbuster were chains that allowed some people who essentially could only rent, not own games.

While there may be more options like the Xbox Gamer Pass or free to pay and free to play games, renting video games was an escape for many people I knew in the 90s who didn't have the luxury of buying a title, especially as games get more expensive.

It's also really crucial in places where Internet isn't so great as to download a game or stream it, and the same goes with streaming movies and television.

@Dm9982 This is about consumer demand, not what the developers prefer. I think there will always be a decent demand for individual purchases, and developers will then be forced to continue to meet that demand to overall make more money even if initial production costs extra.

Really, the thing that's a bigger danger to physical media is individual digital purchases rather than streaming. If you buy a digital copy of a song or movie, you can easily play it on a PC (which can be output to a TV) or other digital devices whenever you want. You also don't have to worry about your media wearing out (plus many streaming services do not keep everything available indefinitely). Even if you still want it on disc, you can just burn a new copy of it yourself, just maybe without certain extra features being available. We're already at the point where people keep their purchased music collections digitally backed up, and eventually it should become possible to treat movies the same way.

In any case, whether you go primarily physical or digital, those like me who prefer individual purchases to streaming will likewise always have an interest in renting, and it's a lot easier to rent via physical media.

@Omarzy So two stimulus payouts don't count as direct financial assistance? Neither do increased food stamp payouts and other temporarily expanded social programs? Meanwhile, the guy who actually won the U.S. presidential election (despite Trump's ridiculous protests) plans to finally end the tax cuts on the rich. (As much as I generally agree with the Republican party, the fiscal conservative in me admits that their trickle down economic theory has never actually worked in practice.)

Maybe things could have been done better, but don't lie about what has been done (at least in the United States), and you can't blame COVID problems on the financial system itself while any other system is even worse at handling it.

I haven't thought about Family Video for years. My brother and I would rent from them back in the day. Good times.

@BulbasaurusRex True, I just see digital demand eventually over taking physical to the point of physical being “Limited Run”. I prefer physical to digital, especially when it comes to rental - FV closing basically means I have to pay double the price for new release rentals now. The local FVs only charged $2-3 a night for new HD releases, where all digital sources charge $5+ for new HD rentals.

I’ve seen most computer tech through the years, and have seen just how fast we flip media sources enough to fully kill out or near fully kill out previous formats. Betamax, VHS, Cassette, Vinyl, CD.... Somethings, like music on CD / Vinyl still exist in production, but in limited quantities and/or much higher prices than say buying em from iTunes.

So what will likely happen in 10-20 years is pop ups of companies akin to Limited Run Games, that solely exist to produce and publish in a physical format, be it games, shows, movies....

As we move into higher resolution, and game / movie data sizes become bigger and bigger, this will also force hands on physical media aspects. Disc based operation will cap out to a point where data exceeds storage capacity, as well as the data not being able to be read fast enough. The last part is already happening as next gen systems require the games to be fully installed on the SSDs in order to run even.

@BulbasaurusRex I am not sure I agree with your overall post here. First - in the context of this article, I must note that hobbyist/retro video game stores are doing quite well here in eastern Canada, in and out of the major cities. (EB Games is struggling, but not the overall business niche.) When health restrictions allowed, I visited hobbyist shops catering to many different interests (photography, for example) - the pandemic drove business in this country, rather than destroying it. They've all seen their best year in ages!

Before 2016, when I used to visit the US "Midwest" (as they call it), I would often feel quite sad. It feels like society is being hollowed out down there. With retail collapsing, what will replace it? Nothing. More money is being siphoned out of local communities. Unlike my American friends, I was not shocked when I saw that Ohio, Pennsylvania and its neighbours (even Michigan!) voted for Trump.

There is something plainly wrong in the US - and not just in the financial system. You can see small towns in this country that struggle, and malls have been closing here too, but I don't see society fraying in the same way, at least not yet. The replacement of a Family Video with a Dollar General (shudder) is a bad, bad sign.

@Dm9982 What happens when, as it one day inevitably must, the network fails, even temporarily, and access to just about everything is revoked?

People will realize that centralizing everything was a very bad idea. Though I dread the coming of that day, people plainly need the wake-up call.

The world is changing rapidly, I’m lucky enough to have lived through video rental stores and the golden age of gaming in the 80s & 90s but things change, life moves on.

This hits me hard. There was something special about picking out a movie.. cartoon or game browsing the store. With some lollies as we left.

This pandemic just killed a major aspect of my nostalgia. I'll never forget their free kid movies and those obelisks they kept out front.

There are a bunch here in Michigan.

It's their own fault. They never budged on their prices or offered anything to draw people in so they could stay open. Just the same miserable low wage workers keeping it dusty and unwelcoming. Also, and maybe this is just a thing of the past, I never met an employee at one that knew jack ***** about movies.

Good riddance.

I live in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago, so I am familiar with Family Video. I did not know they went under. R.I.P.

There is one 5 miles from my house. Very sad

I passed this store for years and always asked to go in but my parents never wanted me too for some reason. Kinda weird it's like what's wrong with a video rental store.

Even during a pandemic, Family Video has always been a popular place in my town. Especially with Marcos Pizza right next door.

I know of a few other locations nearby that closed during the past few months, so I had a feeling something was going on.

I am so sad that this is happening. I have been renting games for so long now. It really saves money when trying out new games.

I wonder what this means for Marcos Pizza and the water/ice machines. They have the cheapest water in town there. Also the pizza at Marcos is my favorite in town. Hopefully Marcos sticks around.

@Dm9982 South Central IL, about two hours from your point of reference. Nice to run across another state fellow.

Never even heard of this chain but glad they survived this long.

Kinda sad. We had one open up in our town sometime in the 2010s and were quite astounded that such a place could survive, much less open up at such a time. My parents used it for quite a while, I don't know why they stopped.

@BulbasaurusRex
IIRC, I believe Redbox said they were going to stop renting out games (at least for Switch, it might be for all consoles though) permanently, as of a month (or two) ago. 🤔

@Not_Soos They were a pretty big chain here in Northern Indiana. Way cleaner and more organized, than Blockbuster during their heyday. Always had a great selection of games. The ones by me closed the end of last year. Sorry to see the rest close, but it was probably inevitable.

@Omarzy yep. Big tech is organizing a coup and it’s working.

@Ralizah Panera and Starbucks for meals, Walmart for major purchases, and cvs for everything else. Who needs anything else? Everyone loves the same things, from the same store with the same atmosphere and all of it maximally efficient.

If only we could all be assigned beds and uniforms and eat every meal in the same mess hall, utopia would be complete!

This is terrible!

Hardly relevant but still terrible.

I live in the midwest, Detroit area, and I haven't seen a Family Video in eons-- I thought it been closed down honestly. Well... i guess that's truly the last of the "video rental store" concept. Congrats to them holding on for so long.

@Heavyarms55 However, what you're talking about is your individual preference. A shop like this was able to stay in business so long because it still had demand. It's not like it was just sitting there with two customers for years...

...It's kind of like how every year or so some silly article pops up like, "Guess who's still using pagers in 20XX!" While the vast majority of the population doesn't using pagers/beepers anymore, there are still customers out there who are willing to pay for the service and so the business still exists. While most people may be streaming video and buying digital copies of games, there must have been enough business right up through 2020 to remain open.

So I get your overall point, that you think it's too expensive to use a physical rental service today when compared to the cost of streaming/digital services - Blockbuster tried adapting it's business model to compete with the emerging Netflix at the time, and for some reason failed. Other video rental chains have continued to succeed for some reason.

There was a local video shop near my town in Australia that only closed last year - I think because the owners just wanted to retire. Their secret to success was that they never got rid of anything. So that meant that while perhaps a film went out of demand for 10 years or so, people started coming back looking for obscure films from 20 or 30 years ago that is just not available on streaming services. It's like how vinyl records have come back in vogue and have outsold CDs in 2019.

I was one of the people that used to hire RPGs like Final Fantasy VI (III) and Earthbound from the video shop and play them for the few days I had them. When I'd hire them again, sometimes my save game would still be there; sometimes they would have been overwritten.

Anyway, enough from me for now!

@Nitwit13 It's not just my preference. What kept those stores in business as long as they lasted was habit. People, myself being no exception, get used to doing something a certain way. And even if a better idea comes along, if they are comfortable as they are, they wont change for a long time. But the amount of people using this kind of service has been on the decline for a long long time and I have no doubt that this pandemic only sped up what was an inevitable decline.

I live in the West Coast of the US so I had never heard of this family chain.

but I can relate with the loss of a video store. I grew up with the obvious Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, but I also rented from many other local places that slowly closed one by one. weekends were magical as a child as it meant no school and playing a new game that I rented every weekend!

RIP physical rental stores 😢

@Not_Soos then you clearly do not or ever have lived in the Midwest.

I’m in Minnesota and I had one in the city I was in close last year. They still have a couple around me so I’ll need to go check on their clearance sales. Sad that they’re closing as they were a nice video store with good prices on rentals. Older stuff was 99-cents for 5 days or even free kids movies.