GameStop, the largest video game retailer in the world, is no longer for sale – nobody wants to buy them.
GameStop made the announcement today, putting the rumored February announcement of a buyer firmly in the dust:
In June 2018, GameStop’s Board, together with outside financial and legal advisors, commenced a review of a wide range of alternatives to enhance shareholder value. The Board undertook a comprehensive review process, including discussions with third parties regarding a potential sale of the company. GameStop’s Board has now terminated efforts to pursue a sale of the company due to the lack of available financing on terms that would be commercially acceptable to a prospective acquiror.
As a result of the announcement (and, presumably, rumours of Apple stepping into the distribution fray) GameStop’s share price fell by a quarter. This comes after its half-billion dollar profit loss in Q3 of 2018, its sale of its Spring Mobile business for 700 million dollars and, more recently, the embarrassing Kingdom Hearts 3 PS4 debacle in which they oversold their stock of a GameStop-exclusive item. Here’s the part where I smugly post a link to my thoughts on GameStop’s string of (ongoing) bad news.
And this is bad news for GameStop: ‘lack of available financing on terms that would be commercially acceptable to a prospective acquiror’ here means ‘we have no hope of convincing anybody that we’re salvagable.’ I just don’t quite know if things can get much worse. In a way, I almost feel sorry for them. But then I remember the gaming Internet’s mantra and am reminded that this is for the best:
Story sourced from Gamesindustry.biz. Photo taken by ‘ryanrules’ on Flickr.
