OPINION: About that MCV cover…

GAME’s communications boss called me earlier. I am not a popular person at the retailer’s Basingstoke HQ right now. And for good reason.

I’ve had hate mail from some of GAME’s 6,000 employees this morning. I am not a popular person at the retailer’s 600 shops right now. And for good reason.

MCV’s cover this week has had some neat and clean ripostes – the best is pictured to the right.

Does MCV hate GAME and want it dead? Do I hate GAME and want it dead?

No.

You only have to randomly pick one of the editorials on the topic written by myself, Ben Parfitt or Chris Dring to understand that the last thing we want is for the UK to lose the two specialist retail chains for video games GAME runs.

The relief in the stories about potential buyers emerging. The comments in my own editorials after being so angry with anti-GAME sentiment on other sites. We can’t only report on the good news – hence why we’ve had to cover every moment in GAME’s dramatic 2012 so far, and to make sure we have served the employees who have uncertainty hanging over them and want information. But our overall stance is that we would love to see GAME survive.

So why the cover that screams ‘GONE’ this week?

As I have explained: whatever happens in next week or so, GAME as we knew it has gone. Until now we had hoped it might remain intact. It wasn’t intended as an obituary, we aren’t rubbing our hands hoping for GAME’s demise. If anything, events since that cover went to press have rammed home how change is ahead. The line-up of acquisition suspects now includes OpCapital, Wal-Mart and GameStop. None of them are going to buy GAME and not make some changes.

But no one at MCV wants the thousands of people that work at its stores to go out of a job. No one wants to see its hard-working HQ team to suffer.

We’ve first-hand seen the hard work done by both camps time and again. We’ve reported on it. We’ve given awards to it. We’ve championed it.

Perhaps a cover like that can overshadow the day-to-day survival this company is fighting for. That was never our intention. We had perceived the fight as being beyond anything to do with the company’s logo – it was a workforce of thousands of game-savvy men and women pulling together to fight and keep going.

It’s a fight that we really do want to see them win.