GAME To Stay Open

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, on a distant planet, blindfolded… and maybe with some ear muffs on, you’ll no doubt be aware that the high street behemoth GAME have been having a bit of trouble and were forced into administration.  Rumours have since been flying around about whether they would opt to close down the majority of their Gamestation stores, along with a selection of GAME stores, in order to keep running costs at a minimum and continue trading through their dark times.  Sadly, that didn’t appear to be happening and so, with the magenta-tinted glasses eventually becoming near-black, most people had resigned themselves to the thought of their stores closing for good.

Every new day brings new opportunities, a wise man once said, and today has dumped one hell of a package on to the doorstep of GAME HQ, and that package contains not so much of a golden parachute but a safety net at least.  Yes, according to The Independent, investment firm OpCapita rattled their piggy bank a few times and out popped a £1 coin, which was just enough to buy the entire GAME group and save over 3200 jobs throughout 333 stores.  While it may be one of those moments where you think “holy shit, I wish I’d known I could buy the entire group for a quid, because I’d not have bothered buying that Ginsters at lunch and become a zillionaire”, it’s important to consider that GAME made a loss of £18m last year… a LOSS which equates to 57p every single second of every day, totalling £49,315 per day.

Let’s hope that OpCapita spend their quid wisely and consider the fate of the video games industry before rolling out 333 stores of the same tired pre-owned sections, clogging the arteries of creativity until there’s nothing left to keep the industry alive.  Then again, as an investment firm, it’ll likely be all about business and no heart.  Perhaps the 3200 employees will thank their lucky stars and try to push brand new releases over pre-owned to stop the developers from being out of a job in the long run, but I’m sure the new bosses will suggest otherwise.

Source: The Independent

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